2014-06-02 PPS School Board Study Session

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2014-06-02
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	study
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education - Study Session - June 2, 2014 Part 1

00h 00m 00s
[Applause] our our our our our our our our our save our save our save our excuse [Applause] me good evening thank you so much welcome to all of our D Vinci students and parents who are here tonight we can see you and hear you and we appreciate you being here and just want to remind you that we are trying to carry on the business of the district and disrupting the meeting is a disorderly conduct so please please try and keep your comments and your it is what it is is so please try and keep your please try and keep your uh this is a volunteer please try and uh keep your um chanting and comments to a place where we can still continue to carry on the meeting that would be great um also I just wanted to mention that and I see George over here helping us out that the aisles need to remain clear by the fire code okay so thank you so much so this study session of the board of educ ation for June 2nd is called to order I'd like to extend a warm welcome to everyone present and to our television viewers while our study sessions are generally limited to our receipt of information from staff and discussion of that information and review of resolutions prior to a vote at times we conduct votes during study sessions any item that will be voted on this evening has been posted as required by state law this meeting is being televised live and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the Board website for replay times the meeting is also being streamed live on our PPS TV services website uh one slight change to the agenda tonight agenda tonight excuse me we're going to begin with agenda item two and then hold public comment so with that think they're here somewhere yeah okay um after three days of simulated Congressional hearings on the US Constitution and Bill of Rights we are very proud to announce that our own Lincoln High School won first place in the National We the People conf [Applause] comptition this achievement marks Lincoln's fifth win making it the only School in the nation to win five national titles so again go Lincoln congratulations superintendent Smith do you have some comments um just that I'd like to introduce pton Chapman who's the principal at Lincoln and Jason Trombly one of the coaches to come on up um and introduce the team and that what I'd like to say I get to go to the airport and welcome this team back and I've gotten to go pretty much every year to welcome a PPS team back and it's been totally exciting um and the fact that we've won six national championships five of them Lincoln is just phenomenal um but part of what happens is getting off the plane the entire team moves like it's one organism coming down and it's like so tight and so awesome what this builds in the group of students who go and compete and some of the toughest competition is here in the state of Oregon and actually I'm going to just do a quick call out for Marilyn cover who um is one of the Champions and one of the people who's built this infrastructure to to have the level of preparation we have and the coaches who are part of this oh my goodness we have coaches who have been part of this since the beginning they prepare for this every year and it's the the just the kind of adult energy that goes into preparing our teams thank you to all of our coaches so step Griffith I see you sitting there too former Schoolboard member and like Avid Champion so with that pton and Jason will you come on up and introduce the team and our coaches good evening superintendent Smith and our school board and student uh representative Mr Davidson congratulations you only have two days left of school I think um I am the proudest principal what principal gets to travel to DC with a a state winning Constitution team three times in her principal ship and uh to go twice and come home with national
00h 05m 00s
champions has just been phenomenal and I sit here not just as the principal but I'm so proud of our Public School System I'm so proud of Grant's team and Wilson's and Madison's and Franklin's and Lincoln's team and that the state of Oregon has won this National Title three years in a row and uh we know we're a political state so it's just really exciting to see our students reflect that passion for Learning and for democracy and citizenship and I really want to thank the um Da Vinci students for being here today I think they would make great unit five team members um because agree they really could talk about the right to petition and assemble and their free speech rights and uh Allison Brody is a great coach on unit five up here so I want to thank her and our coaches too um but really I joke but I I don't think any of us will be happy until we see a We the People program in every fifth grade classroom across our district and a We the People program in every eighth grade classroom because that scaffolding is so important and I know that we have enough volunteer coaches we have Spanish Immersion students at Lincoln who go and teach in the new Spanish Immersion um Elementary k5s they do that their senior year uh one day every week they go and teach um in the elementary schools and I know that our constitution Team Champions could do the same thing they could go into the elementary schools and they could work with fifth graders to establish We the People programs and it would be a great way to Foster and model that citizenship that they have demonstrated so beautifully so I'm sure my time is up but um Jason Trombley has been a fantastic coach along with all of our other coaches these coaches could be playing golf at 4 o'clock they could be doing a lot of things and they are at Lincoln every first period they're at school Tuesday nights now they're at school Thursday nights bringing on the the new 20145 team and they meet on Sundays at stole Reeves and they do weekend Retreats and these adults do amazing things and I really want to call out Misha Isaac who's a PPS Alum a Lincoln Alum who just presented the Oregon gay marriage case and was successful and he's a Lincoln Constitution team uh coach who gives so much time to our kids so we're just so proud of the whole program thank you L uh thank you to Marilyn and Barbara too from the classroom law project and um you'll hear from Jason and then our um fantastic student Sandra Hong and her older sister is also a national champion Kendra Hong and their parents are here too and always um so thankful so I'm glad that you both can be here thank you so much for supporting this program so superintendent Smith members of the board thank you so much for acknowledging the team success from April tonight um as pton Chapman said I am one of the 12 volunteer coaches who takes the time to work with students at Lincoln High School and I think for me one of the biggest takeaways is that this team that is of 36 students 30 of them are sophomores who apply their spring semester of their freshman year only knowing a little bit about what the Constitution team program is its tradition and what it does so I think at the very onset when we get through this whole process of interviewing them they're really taking an intellectual risk they're wanting to voluntarily say I want an academic challenge this is a program that they know that can push them and they're willing to say I'm ready push me as hard as you can to the best you've rebild because they want to rise to that challenge so I think with that through that process over the years we've had anywhere from 65 kids to apply to two years ago where he had 96 so I think what this tells me is that students across our school through all walks of life are interested in this kind of content and the coaches have been so grateful to really figure out how do we make this program accessible to every kid that walks through the building at Lincoln High School so I think with that it's been an honor and a privilege to really work with these kids who really want to take on the role of active citizenship who also learn that when they join Constitution team possibly their sophomore year that that's the first step in their learning process around how to be an active citizen they learn in the basics here at Lincoln at sophomore year but they know that the learning isn't done we have students who about five or six years ago started a nonprofit organization a certified 501c3 where students after con team can actually go into immigrant communities and work with them to actually prepare them to take the US citizenship exam it's a business they design the curriculum they design the schedule they work with ESL teachers here at PPS to figure out how do you best teach those families well they also do a program called We the Kids which is actually working to get We the People program Conta content in the hands of fifth graders so what has been a unique joy and a pleasure both as a coach and as an alumnist of the program is that these kids want the challenge they want to give back they want to learn they do their best and they expect us to rise to the challenge and push them so while it's an honor and privilege to coach them I'm really grateful for them giving us the opportunity to work with such motivated teammates and for now I'll turn it over to one of our students from the 2014 team sandre Hong hi
00h 10m 00s
[Music] first I want to thank you all for um letting us be here today it's such a privilege to be here um and also from this whole Constitution team experience I really learned so much and in fact I believe that the most important lesson that I learned is that anything is really possible as long as you really commit to it I remember standing on the Lincoln Memorial after we won and I realized that you could really achieve something great if you put 100% of your effort in it I remember staying up late and thinking that maybe maybe if I just read that one more chapter from a book by monesy or Gordon Wood maybe it it would just make all that difference and I think that it really did and from there it seems that almost anything is possible however this of course would not have been possible without the spectacular coaches that we were able to have 12 of them actually and also from The Amazing support from our teacher Mr Tim swinhart our principal Miss pton Chapman our family alumni volunteers and to the amazing schools that we were able to compete with in states such as Grant Franklin and lakeo sua high school and so overall from this whole experience I learned so many lifelong lessons and I feel extremely privileged to be able to have this opportunity and be able to stand here tonight and be able to represent this so I really hope that um I really know that this experience will be changing my life and I am absolutely grateful and thankful for that so thank you so [Applause] much so um I also had two sons who were on Constitution teams and I can tell you you're right it is a life-changing experience and I'm so happy that so many of our high schools now have uh Constitution team programs um and I hope that very soon every one of our high schools will have programs because they really are and I also agree with with uh principal Chapman that we do need to articulate that down into the earlier grades so thank you so much for all of you being here um I'd like to invite you all of you and the coaches and the teams to come are we going to line up on this side and have our picture taken how's that okay just right along the um aisle right there yep board members yep to ready no I'm just know [Applause] I know camera to be looking smile broadly they had stud here go ahead oh yeah if those of you in the back want to
00h 15m 00s
fill in there's lots of spots here now or you can stay standing okay at this time we'll move on to our next agenda item after that wonderful opportunity to celebrate our students um Miss Houston uh do we have anyone signed up for public comment we do we have six our first two speakers gunar Olen and Don gavit great uh while while you two are coming up I'll go ahead and read the instructions for uh public comment thank you very much for taking the time to come to our board meeting we deeply appreciate uh public input and we look forward to hearing your thoughts Reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board lies in actively listening and reflecting on the thoughts and opinions of others guidelines for public comment emphasize respect and consideration when referring to board members staff and other presenters the board will not respond to any comments or questions at this time but board or staff will follow up on various issues that are raised please make sure that you've left your contact information with Miss Houston pursuing to board policy 1.7.0 one2 speakers may offer objective criticisms of District op operations and programs but the board will not hear complaints concerning individual District Personnel any complaints about specific employees should be directed to the superintendent's office and will not be heard in this forum okay you have a total of three minutes please Begin by stating your name spelling your last name during the first two minutes of your testimony there'll be a green light in front of you when you have one one minute remaining a yellow light will come on and when your time is up the red light will go on and a buzzer will sound and we ask that you wrap up your comments at that time so thank you very much to both of you for being here tonight you can go ahead hello my name is gunar Olsen o LS o n uh I'm a DaVinci alumni and currently a junior in in high school and I'm here to talk about my experience with core class um I'm also dyslexic I've known that I'm dyslexic since third grade it has been something I've struggled with my entire life when I went to Da Vinci I found that core helped with my dyslexia having a teacher who knows who I am and knows that I'm dyslexic it helps having that be the same teacher for three years that helps my teacher was Christy King she got to know me over the our time together and she knew when I struggled and when I needed help even if I wasn't too keen on asking for it she'd make sure that she helped me another great thing about core class is I had this great learning environment for not one class but I had it for three one of these classes was language arts a class I consistently struggled with because of my dyslexia having Christy there to help me out it really helped when I entered Da Vinci I was a tall lanky towhead who Str struggled in school when freshman year of high school rolled around I was still tall lanky and a tow head but I I killed the class's freshman year and having that experience in core class I brought those Resources with me and it really helped me out so if you cut core class just remember all those tall lanky toe heads with dyslexia that you're going to be hurting dyslexics don't learn the same as everybody else and neither should Da Vinci students thank you very much hey everybody hey everybody I'm Don gavit that's gavit tte uh I teach social studies at Grand high school and I am a two-time da Vinci dad as well the uh so I'm here with that hat on more than anything else but the two go together um I'm not going to argue uh for Da Vinci core using data uh data concerning assessment pedagogy and methodology is notorious for its uncontrollable variables the uh um and we can't even get into absolute truth I teach philosophy will'll be here all night if we start talking about absolute truth as a concept but um anyway with that aside John Dewey once said the truth is that which works Da Vinci Middle School Works however it works um in many ways the data points and spreadsheets can't capture for example Da Vinci students know that diversity is better than uniformity Da Vinci students know that self-expression comes in many forms and that it's usually beautiful and often powerful D Vinci students often consider themselves just that da Vinci students well after eighth grade promotion something any school would be proud of it was I felt that proud Pride as a general here today and I know Andrew did as well I didn't know you guys were going to flip and have Lincoln first I would have been late the uh no I'm joking it's I'm but that ties in with what I want to say the uh when we take
00h 20m 00s
that off my seconds the uh when we truly look at uh the Adolescent not just data about adolescence but the Adolescent themselves we see ourselves warts and all um we also see the future so I I ask I ask you guys this I I ask the board um and and superintendent Smith this what was your greatest most pivotal educational moment in your life think about that and also think what what was the moment in your life when you started feeling relatively comfortable in your own skin the and if that's not enough to think about think about the moment you realized that no one was exactly like you and that you had much to offer the world that's what happens in Da Vinci core that's how we get Constitution teams the that's how we get gold medal awards at Grant High School and the Colombian student press Association it starts with being comfortable in your own skin and that starts with the core model the let me just end with this the um I I ask you to consider reminding principles that these are the most important persons in a young important moments in a young person's life the and that they rarely if ever are fostered by a higher test score they are fostered by communities modeled by adults and engaged by young people they are fostered by such things as Da Vinci core they are precious they are not in need of Reform the and with that the let us um please hear our plea to save D Vin core not as one school but as a reminder of who we want to be as a city more than a test score more than a data entry point more than we can ever imagine thank [Applause] you thank you both next we have Ruth gibian and Sakai Edwards you can start anytime okay Ruth gibian Gib I an if the purpose of the major structural changes proposed for Da Vinci Middle School are because of a need to elevate mathematics let's consider why math matters math matters because among other things it teaches our students to learn and practice logical thinking to be able to abstract and think ahead several steps and to make decisions based on fact not intuition if this is what we want them to learn let us lead by example the proposed changes are not based on any of these principles rather they are they are illogical shortsighted impulsive and not in keeping with academic research please delay this decision and only take action that is well researched and well considered core teaches skills in planning organization time management and help-seeking all of which are necessary for success in math current pedagogical thinking suggests a trend towards a core type model in middle school because it is developmentally appropriate in high school because it decreases dropout rate and in community colleges including PCC Lane and Lyn Benton because it increases math completion I wish School administrators had to take an oath like doctors do first Do no [Applause] harm continuing with this plan which goes against what current research says are best practices is akin to academic malpractice there is also a puzzling and troubling lack of in in quiry into the math dilemma if my car broke down I'd be foolish to race to my mechanic demanding demanding a new head gasket before running any Diagnostics but this is exactly what's happening at D Vinci if the proposed changes are based on test scores then why aren't the glaring validity and reliability issues of those scores being addressed The Oaks tests have a 30% margin of error terrible from a reliability point of view and considering Oaks tests a valid measure when there has already been a curriculum change is poor science as well if test scores started to go down 3 years after Stellar performance by our school for many years then why isn't there a systematic analysis of what has changed in those years a change of curriculum without a matching change of measure introduction of block schedule a new principle perhaps with the many changes throughout the PPS system a change in the da Vinci applicant pool and therefore the demographic of the school and if multiple changes continue to be implemented there is no control control
00h 25m 00s
there is no way of knowing which factor is having an effect further the results of this year's tail survey for Da Vinci are disgraceful for a school formerly considered a jewel in the system and should sound a loud alarm because teaching and learning conditions are predictive of math achievement do the diagnostic before rebuilding the engine allow time for a team of parents teachers administrators and students to give this problem the study it deserves thank [Music] you my name is say Kai Edwards s e k a i e w e d w a r DS um I graduated from D Vinci Arts Middle School two years ago in that time I had the same core class for all three years I excelled in Reading Writing and Science and all my standardized testing but more importantly I was able to make the transition from elementary school to middle school without losing the sense of community I had experienced for my entire education I was pushed to work harder when I was in sixth grade with eighth graders and when I was in eighth grade to continue to be an influence to the sixth graders in my class however I understand that this board likes data my eighth grade year I was surrounded by incredibly talented group of students but that data wasn't stored anywhere right along our test scores there's no list of our AC accomplishments does your decision to follow standardized testing scores also show that in my graduating class at only 16 years old kids have gone on to do things such as Mikey Garcia who's attending juliard summer program or Jacob roer who's going to dance for the Dutch Royal Ballet at only 16 years old after studying with the Russian cure off ballet in Washington DC every year in core class we studied rehearsed and annotated and performed monologues and even though I've studied in theater it was this academic learning and understanding that led me to being able to go to Nationals for the August Wilson monologue competition and win a scholarship to study theater on Broadway this summer however when you open my file all you will consider is the number from your precious outdated bias and racially oppressive standardized test from the shaping of our creativity to our academic success core class has not only been instrumental but altogether imperative to the Exemplar education that has come to be expected out of DaVinci Arts Middle School I beg of you that you consider that everything cannot be written down next to my name in three categories almost meets meets and exceeds core class is best described by its own name core please do not strip us of our core I am not one of few I am one of many and so are my fellow artists and leaders I urge you to push Mr Lock to use wise Judgment of what da Vinci should be and not with this new era of privatized standardized thinking that is sweeping our nation and ruining our creativity communities and altogether our educational Freedom thank you [Applause] lastly we have Chris willhite and Dennis Phillips I'm Chris will height it's w LHI T my son is a sixth grader at at Da Vinci um and I've been following the proposed changes by the administration to the core and daily schedules um more recently because I just sort of found out about them recently um so I went to the PTSA meeting where uh Mr Lock presented um the presentation and uh I understand the concern that folks have with the math test scores if we truly have comparable data across many years and across the district uh and the state that shows a troubling Trend uh downward Trend in math uh and science course then we should all be concerned but what struck me was what seems like a very uh cartisian sort of kneejerk response uh to the problem by the administration um so many scientific
00h 30m 00s
fields s have abandoned this mechanical view of nature this cartisian uh view of nature where if there's a deficiency you simply add more of what's deficient but human beings are not machines we're not machines we have to be holistic and inclusive about our approach to solving the problems uh so at the PTSA meeting a friend of mine made um a really great point which I I I hope wasn't missed when she said that her son's difficulty was uh with math was not going to be fixed with the 10 minute 10 more minutes of math a day in class but rather with the time and his core periods where he can learn better organizational skills and that's just the thing right the current format is what works it's what makes Da Vinci what it is if something was inherently wrong with a current schedule structure then Da Vinci would have had troubling math scores all along throughout its history if there are real quantifiable problems that have recently surfaced then let's work together to identify the cause but the administration and what seems like kind of a panic seems like because we we only get these these messages at the very end um has just jumped to this like simplistic conclusion that we need to cut time from core in order to make room for 10 minutes per day of math and science so that's sort of like a leap um of logic that's based on outdated uh assumptions so I'm here of course joining with many others to and ask the administration to keep the current schedule uh structure it is what makes stenci what it is uh and it's what makes it successful if the administration can truly can use truly comparable data to exhibit a downward Trend in math and science Readiness then it should take a more thoughtful and inclusive approach with a year-long process to propose and consider various options for d venci with teachers and families of d venci and a Broadway thank [Applause] you I'm not Dennis he graciously gave me his time and I do have a handout from him to give you afterwards my name is Donna Cohen I'm a former technology uh education instructor and I have a masters in vocational education Administration Roosevelt is planning to have a stem CTE program there is no such thing as stem CTE CTE terminology of Career and Technical education was congressionally enacted to replace the terminology vocational education in 2006 CTE teachers are certified in one precise career field stem on the other hand is an interdiscipline interdisciplinary approach to the study of science math Technology and Engineering which prepares students for the next stage of career development one or two years of community college or more after which they can enter a job which is in demand and pays well stem is a great idea technology education AKA technology engineering education science and math principles inform form design and creation the engineering and Technology parts of stem Roosevelt currently does not have a technology educator with an endorsement on staff or even advising the school you don't hire a scientist to teach science you don't hire an engineer to teach techn technology education you hire a technology educator we have some great ones in Oregon connect with them please technology engineering aspect of stem requires knowledge of a very broad array of tools and techniques as opposed to the more focused knowledge base of a vocational instructor all stem teachers science math and technology engineering are on an equal footing all tools and equipment used for project-based stem work need to be adjacent visually and physically the stem workspace needs to accommodate traditional science tools and equipment new high-tech equipment such as 3D printers and conventional manufacturing construction tools and equipment additionally space for constructing projects workbenches and open areas for projects that don't fit on workbenches is necessary if Done Right stem will increase interest among students who have traditionally seen themselves as not suited to science and math and increase the number of minority and female students in science and math a good stem program will keep kids in school longer and improve graduation rates do these things immediately connect with technology Educators in Oregon for advice and consultation make sure the stem space at Roosevelt is workable which in the current remodel plan it is not high higher technology teachers for stem programs the quality of stem teachers and the workspace will make a break the program long range Argan needs to bring back a technology education program like I went to at OSU within one of its schools of education and then I have some materials and a reference to uh
00h 35m 00s
curriculum of Technology education teachers and also a video about Stam which is very uh informative so thank you thank you very [Applause] much thank you thank you again for everybody uh please feel free to connect with Miss Houston if you didn't to give her your contact information if you want uh to be contacted later so at this time we'll move on to our next agenda item which is a comment from the Portland Association of teachers per our contract with p uh which allows time on the board agenda for comment I'd like to invite Gwen Sullivan president of P to testimony table to provide comments I'm not see her she's here oh there she is [Applause] whose core are you in I'm in a lum you're in Lum whose core were you in it thank you you didn't have a core teacher MH fishy just yeah just a sec okay welcome thank you um tonight I actually I don't have a speech I just thought that I would uh give you a a couple of uh updates things to think about um things that we could be working on and doing a little bit different and maybe a little bit better um last week uh I saw the the information about the tell survey and it was one that was in cooperation with uh kosa osba um oea um I can't remember if there's anybody else you guys probably know though um and I think that it had some very um uh eye opening information so I do I'm not going to go too much into it but I think that a lot of times we talk about data we talk about um about certain report cards from the state um based on certain criteria but I also know as a parent and a teacher the the data in this tell survey gives some pretty um uh good information to figure out whether or not you would like your your child at that particular school or or would you like to teach there so just starting off with some of the the tell's um information some of the questions I think it's important to um to really look at I think first of all it's uh important to look at the state um information and for the viewers that don't know what we're talking about it's it's for all Educators um we're encouraged to take this survey about um their teaching um their professional development teacher Leadership School leadership u a number of different things facilities as well and um pretty much except for in two areas the state um compared to Portland we are it seems like we're 10% lower than almost anyone in the state um and now remember the those are averages you put everybody in PPS together right but um that's pretty eye opening um as we look at some of the things that we think are pretty important to teaching and learning um some of the things that we look at is um how what school leadership is and I think the thing that's really important as a teacher for how many years I feel like I've been pretty fortunate that I've worked with some pretty great administrators and just the simple question of the faculty and Leadership have a shared Vision that that means that you're going to go somewhere with your students um and when you're seeing that in some cases um that there 100% of the faculty say they don't have the
00h 40m 00s
same or a shared Vision that's a problem um and then you know the atmosphere of trust and mutual respect in a school I mean that's when you think about your kid going to a school that that's you know that it's there and when you see things pretty shocking where it's you know 90% say no they don't they don't feel trust or mutual respect that's not a place that I would want to necessarily send my own child so I think as we take there's so much data here but I think as we take a look at some of these things um we've got to figure out how we're going to move forward because um I'm quite sure that we we all are very aware that there are problems in our schools and we definitely want to work on making them better um I think we really need to take a look at this and figure out what changes we need to make um there are some schools I will say say that in the opposite 90% say that they feel um like there's trust and mutual respect and even in uh other districts that have this it's to find out what are they doing to in other districts and within our own what are we doing to make sure um that we can replicate replicate that in uh the rest of our schools so I want to figure out how we go we look at this and move forward because I think it's it's really really important to figure out um on behalf of our kids to make a better uh learning environment and teaching environment um some of the other things let me see that I wanted to talk about there's three basic things one is the survey and and to figure out what that means there were some schools that didn't get the 50% at least 50% of the staff didn't fill it out maybe we could figure out how we can replicate those same questions and have a a way that they can they can participate to get more information um but then another another area is we're we're starting to see and and I fully admit that I work in being the the president of Portland Association of teachers I get to see some of the negative things that come in and um we're trying to get to the bottom of some of the things uh that are happening standardizing all of our schools in a way that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense um where in the past in kindergarten and in fifth grade uh families would have little promotion ceremonies and we're starting to see that that is no longer um it's being they're being told you you can't have this and it's not just at one school it's happening more and more and you know it's a problem when as the president of the teachers I'm getting calls from parents I am they're not happy with it and they want to know if we can help so um I'm trying to figure out why we are trying to standardize when we know that um Portland we always talk about our uniqueness and that's what um separates us and I think that a uniqueness is important as long as there's still a lot of opportunities for all of our kids and then going on that same vein the standardizing the um seems as though in the middle schools that we are standardizing the six period day versus the seven period day and I taught at West silen Middle School for about 13 years I was a language arts social studies teacher and that was a three period class and I would say that was really important um especially middle school that's a little funky sorry for Middle School schoolers here I'm not trying to put you down or anything but it's a funky age and I think what's important to know about that is it's really nice to have a teacher somebody that you have for three periods that you feel comfortable with that you can go to and that is the place where we would teach about their agenda and knowing um we would do binder checks where we'd open up their binder and shake it and if anything fell out then we needed to look at organization so those are the things that are lifelong skills that we also did besides language arts social studies um so really looking at why are we trying to standardize everything and then the last thing which is a really important thing is last time I was up here it was just after we ratified our contract agreement and I think that uh initially we had seen that there was a a shared goal of having joint trainings around the contract so we have less disputes and to date there isn't any and there were some that were scheduled and then they were cancelled and and then now it looks we're hearing that there's
00h 45m 00s
a possibility that maybe in the fall October there might be some joint trainings but it is so important to have those joint trainings because as you can imagine how many disputes we already have so um I I think we have to make sure that that's a priority because a contract a mutually owned contract is only as good as us um putting it together and then um I I noticed tonight that you're going to be talking about discipline and once again we know there are issues in our schools we have been asking uh boy I think it's for the last two years about um how we can look at discipline and get some information and um seeing the information and I haven't been able to fully go through it but uh in the board book tonight there are many things that we could have been talking about and um there are many things I guess that aren't too surprising but um there's what we're hearing in our office is that there are a lot of people that will turn in a referral write a referral and then they don't know if it's even been processed they don't know um what the followup is um it could be that it's in the computer or maybe not uh I don't know and so we're trying to figure out a better system for follow-through on this um because we really want to make sure that when you have clear boundaries for students that they actually feel safer because they know where they are um and at the same time look at those with and we are very clear about this understanding culture and um the cultural uh practice that goes into those things so um trying to trying to I guess the biggest message I have is can can we really try to work together and not be against each other I think there are opportunities to um do things different and once again I'm open to do so and I'll take any questions if director F any low questions tonight great I would have a comment about U question the uh do you I'll ask my question after you after I make this comment then I'll ask my question which will be you agree with me the uh the on Section 7.3 one of the things they talked about is are teachers in the tell survey are te are teachers able to bring forth things without basically without fear of Retribution and it seemed to me that that correlated well with the trust and respect when I've looked through that tell survey is that the same uh that you found um with at least with the the the places that I've looked because like I said there's a lot of information to look at yes I think they directly um they directly um correspond the numbers seem to be the same thank you very much for being here can quick question clarifying question director Morton thank you hey um actually I have a clarifying question and then then a quick statement I'm not familiar with the term promotion ceremony can you tell me with that so for a number of years um so there's graduation obviously at uh high school but um at different um stages uh just celebrating maybe a move on oh you made it through Kinder well and there's been certain um grades that have that are more um traditional I guess so it would' be kindergarten it would be uh fifth it would be eth okay that's what I thought it was thank you um I appreciate that clarify certainly verification but there's also one thing and I think you you mentioned it and this is goes back to a comment I made when the the contract was ratified implementation is absolutely key to the success of this contract and uh and one of the things that I was really excited about were the opportunity to do joint trainings so um I'd be interested in uh in hearing uh the perspective from Administration we can do that offline on what uh what has has been the hold up since that moment and how we can how we can expediate that because I think that's a October doesn't make sense to me and uh and I think pushing that uh pushing that forward where I mean now it might be too late for this year depending on uh when trainings happen but uh but that seems like it's maybe a missed opportunity thank you I'm just going to say I know conversations have been going on between p and folks in our human resources to plan the trainings and there was one
00h 50m 00s
that was scheduled right away that then I think the opportunity to plan prior to actually op put together what the training actually is prior to delivering and I know they were setting a schedule for next year at looking at Pro um at least three joint trainings over the course of next year um was what I know so far it's that's it's what I've heard from yeah okay did you is I'd love to see it we could maybe get a um some information on the until survey results also maybe here so those those were out I think they came uh via email we haven't done in the board meeting but I did also want to thank you very much for bringing up some of those points um but I do want to let the public know that you can see all of them online at T oregon.org so if you're interested in seeing more of those results that's where you would go thank you for saying that I I failed to mention that but that's true it's good to thank to look at okay okay on to our next agenda item um we're very excited to receive sackett's report tonight uh the superint shouldn't say sacket the superintendent advisory committee on enrollment and transfer superintendent Smith would you like to introduce this item um yes and I'll say a little bit about the next two items because they are separate but connected um when we completed the Jefferson enrollment balancing process um one of the things that was a conversation and then a recommend recommendation to the board and then subsequently a resolution um was to look first at and then I a charge to the committee was to take a look at um and aligning our enrollment and transfer policies with um our racial educational Equity policy and our strategic framework and then secondly to uh do a districtwide approach to boundary review and boundary change rather than going cluster by cluster because invariably as a large District we had been looking at boundaries with cluster by cluster and then you would invariably hit a moment in the in the conversation where you'd want to be able to include contiguous boundaries um and it would be none of those folks had been in the conversation so um after um I then charged the superintendent advisory committee on enrollment and transfer which actually has been in existence for 5 years so some of the members that you will hear tonight have been uh advisers in previous um processes um this current charge of aligning the uh enrollment and transfer policies with our racial educational Equity policy they've been tackling over the last 15 months this is a committee that actually um is has broad stakeholder representation people applied to be on it uh it's um diverse geographically and in terms of what types of schools um folks represent what parts of the district what clusters um and they part of what is exceptional I think about this is this committee first takes on educating themselves about the complexity of the issues prior to actually beginning to make recommendations um to me uh so tonight what you are going to hear is a status report from this committee and some preliminary recommendations we will then so we'll hear that those status they're seeking input from the board prior to making final recommendations back to me so tonight we'll be and actually I'll just leave leave it there uh and let that group go because following them we are then going to hear about u a preliminary approach to a boundary review process but before they start um I ask Judy Brennan and um who directs our enrollment and transfer office and John Isaacs who is the director of community involvement in public affairs to come on up to present this um I'd like to ask the entire um sacket membership to please stand and let us just recognize you and in particular part um I'm sure uh Alison brunett and Jason Trombley who are seated here um up front were the co-chairs of this committee this committee has done incredibly deep and hard work and then written a 51-page report which they're delivering here tonight uh as a status report and I'm just I mean it's an exceptional body of work and not not only have they deliberated amongst themselves but they've then also sought input from the community and places they needed to learn more convened panels of people that they are wanting to go deeper and learn uh more about the complexities of the issues that they're trying to then generate recommendations for me so thank you for your work um and I will say John Isaacs Judy Brennan take it away um thank you good evening um I don't want to um extend the Preamble any longer because um this is a very hard um working group of folks they have a lot
00h 55m 00s
to say they've worked um tirelessly to say it and to bring it to you at this moment I'm going to get to that but before we do um uh just to say it's a it's an incredible pleasure um and an honor as staff to be able to support such a community- based team and I'll say that on behalf of John um Hector roché Janine fudo from our Equity office who are also a part of that and um we have actually a video presentation that introduces the group that we'd like to start and then the next voices you'll hear will be co-chairs Jason Tromblay and Alison Bernett throughout the last 15 months sacket has met over 28 times and had a series of informative discussions with staff members Department staff but also principles in neighborhood and focus option schools as well as conducted a series of interviews with parents throughout the district regarding special education policies doing language immersion to really get an understanding of how race Equity intersects with District policies it's an issue that I want to work on personally and that I like to work on as part of a system like a school system so being on sacket gives me an opportunity to work on that issue that's uh very near and dear to me when I found that I was selected I was really pretty happy uh because I have such a long time of involvement with Portland schools and I I felt that I could bring to the committee some history and some uh uh some passion it's a really collegial group of people even though we all come from different parts of the district and we all have very different experiences and very different um opinions about how um we all I mean we all want to get to the same end point which is to have a district that serves every kid just as well um but we all have different opinions about the best way to get there so we have some spirited meetings but it's it's great it's been fascinating for me to be able to take the work C off come here with a broad section of our entire Portland Public um School Community stakeholders past and present parents grandparents of children that have gone through Portland Public Schools and for us to share our perspectives based on our own lens that we bring and then opening our our lens wider to see that perspective from others so it's been an amazing um opportunity for me to see it through other people's eyes I'm excited to be part of sacket because I feel that the work that is happening right now in the district uh in at a policy level is really starting to um have multiple perspectives so I'm I'm excited that it's kind of a a new shift and a change that hasn't necessarily happened before in Portland and in a lot of other places so I'm excited to be part of that I really like the ability to be engaged in what goes on in my high school district I'm a firm believer that all students should get involved and I'm really happy that I have the opportunity to be on this committee and participate in making some positive change this is a great example of um how we want to be engaging the community which is really having a core group that becomes knowledgeable and then is really leading what other voices we need to hear um as we're trying to um get our arms around really complex issues um so I think they've done this in a really expert fashion um I think we've had a lot of voices really informing their sense making and the report they'll deliver to me um and I feel really good about this as a model that we would like to replicate on other uh tough issues so again thank you to them not only for the work they've done on enrollment and transfer but building a model process for us as well [Music] [Applause] sorry but we're just waiting for the PowerPoint to get up so I think there you go this one that you can use it okay great thank you very much all right good evening superintendent Smith thank you very much for the warm introduction members of the school board and our student representative um thank you very much for taking the time to hear from us after 13 plus months we're excited to be able to take the time and present our preliminary recommendations to you as the superintendent kind of give a quick overview we've been diving deep into a number of these these issues to figure out where we want to actually make some real impact and figure out what that impact looks like to better serve the students of this District so thank you for giving us the flexibility and also the resources and staff and Personnel to actually make this come together so thank you for that um so we'll go ahead with our present presentation um so
01h 00m 00s
first up is in large part how we got here um as the superintendent outlined sacket has been imp place for over five years at this point um but in February of 2013 as a result of the Jefferson enrollment balancing process the board had passed a resolution that charged that came that basically developed two outcomes one of them being to charge sacket with aligning enrollment and transfer policy recommendations to align them with the racial educational Equity policy but also the Strategic framework but then also for the district to conduct a process of districtwide boundary review um in addition this process was called for by community members as part of the Jefferson enrollment balancing process so the reason the work that we're doing is a direct action in response to what the community members a year ago had requested um and additionally over that time since sacket first started meeting on this issue in March we've met over 30 times so every other Tuesday night from about mid-march to about last week or two weeks ago so we've been working really hard to come together in a number of these issues um in addition to that are also our great writing group that put together this report spent I think on average about 20 plus hours over the course of 3 days including Memorial Day weekend to put together the report that was included as part of your board book so again these are all amazing volunteers who put a lot of time and resources to put this together um in addition to that so one of the things that we did do in September was that we provided the board an interim status update as to where we were in the fall and kind of mapped out where we were going to go next so when we last met with you we presented an inim report at that time and we said that we were going to be asking ourselves three questions over the next period of time one of them was uh how will we know when we have completed our inquiry phase and are ready for the recommendations phase second question was who else does sacket need to hear from during the inquiry phase how can we be most inclusive in who we hear from and how can we ensure that the voices who have been historically left out get included and the third question we asked ourselves was what is the best way to hear those perspectives those are the questions we've been working on as well as the uh recommendations that we want to make and we have landed on a report that you now have so following these conversations in the fall uh sack had spent the fall developing an issues inventory to catalogue the issues that we could potentially address in our work based on the information that we received to date as of September through data presentations and panels with principles both neighborhood and focus option School principles and as well as Community Representatives additionally that work in the fallowing over the winter helped sacket identify what additional information that we needed to obtain before we could we were able to determine what problems are there with the existing enrollment and transfer system through the lens of the district's racial education and Equity policy at this time we still have communities to engage with in order to be authentic with implementing the racial educational Equity policy into our work thus at this time and the recommendations that we're presenting to you are preliminary so we want to introduce to you who the committee members are and if they can give a wave so that we can put a face with the name uh Scott Bailey from the grant cluster Tracy Barton from the Lincoln cluster ttha Benjamin Jefferson Madison cluster Marty Burger is our student rep from the Ling Lincoln cluster I'm Allison Bernat from the grant cluster and one of the co-chairs Gabrielle Bolivar from Jefferson Roosevelt cluster Brena herwitz from the Wilson cluster uh Nicole markwell from the Madison cluster Shannon McClure from the Roosevelt cluster and PPS teacher at James John S School Rita Moore from the Roosevelt cluster Nisha saxa from the grant cluster serala Summers McGee from the Madison cluster colie Thor lad from the Roosevelt cluster myself Jason Trombley from the Roosevelt cluster and co-chair and lastly neie Wells of the Franklin cluster okay we wanted to give you a little bit of information about who we heard from in the last 15 months so as Jason said we heard from neighborhood and focus option School principal panels uh we have taken on an incredible amount of data from various staff members in enrollment and transfer in the equity Department ESL dual language immersion from the communications department and school operations and supports Department a lot of Staff members who came and brought data presentation to us gave us information to bring us up to speed we've heard from a panel of parents of students with disabilities and we went to a meeting of the Asian Pacific Islander Community uh the apano community to hear their perspectives we have two more communities that we have an intention of holding uh listening sessions with in the next few weeks and that is the African-American community and the Latino Community those are being planned now okay so next up what we're going to walk you through is kind of a our process kind of The Guiding beliefs and statements that drove our work give you overview of our recommendations and
01h 05m 00s
outline what we think um some potential next steps are as well as hear from you the board as to what our next steps should be to best do this work so first in the series of our the belief statements that drove our work one the strength of the PPS system should be the prevailing consideration even over the individual needs and desires two that the enrollment system should not exacerbate patterns of segregation by race and class three that neighborhood schools should be the foundation of the PPS system and significant effort brought to bear to create strong schools in every neighborhood four supports lessening the supports lessening the degree of choice in favor of strengthening neighborhood School enrollment uh five we applaud the increase in equity allocation for school funding resulting in more program parity that Focus options meant to serve the general population should reflect the demographics of the district the district needs to provide strong ESL and DLI programs close to home for emerging bilingual students and that all of our recommendations should be tested for unintended outcomes and that additional Community conversations be held before we make our final policy recommendations okay and next will be walking through our preliminary recommendations all right the first recommendation there are six the first recommendation is a strategic focus on neighborhoods schools uh sacket believes that every child deserves a vibrant sustainable welcoming and robust neighborhood school and that strategic resource allocation is needed to improve leadership teaching program parity and cultural competence uh you'll notice this is pretty pretty much along the lines of the high school redesign outcomes in that uh calling for a robust neighborhood-based program uh with equalized strong schools in every cluster in that case the second is an end to neighborhood neighborhood Lottery transfers uh recognizing that this goes hand inand with uh the first recommendation which is to provide the resources to make every neighborhood School a strong one if you're going to prevent people from moving between them make sure that every neighborhood school is a strong School uh we recognize in this um in this recommendation that there was a paradox in that um we recognized that low-income families and students of color are disproportionately affected by inconsistencies in programming and disciplinary practices making access to transfers and important component we have heard from African-American families who Advocate to get their children out of some of our neighborhood schools because they are aware that other African-American students are overd disciplined pulled out of classrooms or undermined in reaching their potential uh and that they want access to a current to the current transfer system to be able to make changes to schools where they feel like their child can be in a a school that is safe and a community that treats them with respect and so we recognize that we need to continue to racialize our work as we continue to think about the experience of choice in our system and what it means to change that for various communities the third recommendation is accountability for Focus option schools we seek transparency and Clarity around the purpose that they serve and the value that they bring to the system as a whole uh in this recommend ation we also um have unanimous agreement that the current way that the focus option schools exist is not serving the system as a whole in that student demographics are not representative of the district and that families of color are underrepresented in applications to these schools okay recommendation four which is around support for dual language emersion programs so the committee landed on this recommendation in that we support expansion with CA with caution advised for unanticipated impacts of program sighting or situating and lo collocation so dual language immersion programs continue to be a popular program in the district as seen in the increasing number of students that apply for them each year additionally these programs have better success rates academically at serving emerging bilingual students than other ESL programs dual language emersion program expansion continues throughout the district especially in neighborhoods with where emerging bilingual students reside while also noting that not all High School clusters currently have dual language immersion programs an unintended consequence arises when situating programs in these neighborhoods results resulting in families moving into those neighborhoods and potentially pushing out EB families that PPS is intentionally trying to serve better additionally given the impact of gentrification as I noted above sacket supports dual language immersion expansion but it must take into consideration the impacts of site location of programs both the neighborhoods and collocation of existing programs recommendation five which is
01h 10m 00s
modifications of the focus option Lottery our recommendation around this is with the hope to close the opportunity to gap for historically underserved students we're also initially recommending that we modify preferences and weights and also add a geographic balancer to increase broader inclusion of students both in the application as well as the acceptance rates by improving again access to focus options our hope is that we will close the achievement gap for historically underserved students and then last lastly in preliminary recommendation six which is specifically supporting students with disabilities students assigned outside their neighborhood school for services should be able to remain at that school to the highest grade and siblings should be able to join them two we the district should also work to towards the concept of Universal Design across the district okay recommendations so where do we go from here we are looking forward to receiving some feedback from superintendent Smith and and from the board of directors uh we have more as we've mentioned we have more voices that we want to listen to We don't feel like we're done with our work of listening to communities and so we're currently scheduling uh some listening sessions with the African-American and the Latino uh communities uh we have still a list of outstanding issues that we have not yet gotten to in 15 months uh we would like to see some data simulations to uh be able to look at some of the to look for unintended consequences of our recommendations so we would like to see the en transfer department run some simulations so that we can better understand what we're recommending and the impacts that it might have we want to continue using our Equity lens tool as we looked at the impact of policy changes particularly on communities of color we will be participating in the districtwide boundary review we want to go deeper into our proposed Lottery mechanism changes thinking about what it would mean to change different uh preferences and weights and what kind of changes those would make and uh lastly we are aware of the desire to finalize our recommendations in time to impact the next enrollment cycle and that is our goal for the coming months so with that given sacket workto dat we have two questions that we'd like to pose to the board to frame our conversation this evening um given the initial charge and the resolution that was adopted in February of 2013 um we'd like to hear from your are we ex where you all expected we would be in the course of our work so far um and additionally what advice do you all have for us as we continue to move forward in our work um so with that chair NES me and members of the board we look forward to our dialogue this evening director bule this committee is exactly the type of thing that we should be doing throughout the school district and you're such a model for what wonderful work you can get out of a group where you put them together in a diverse way and then you let them actually go to work and it's out of the community and I just boy this was a terrific report and I really appreciate all the work you've done but it's more than that it's that you really done a nice job uh and so it's trippy I hope we we can use this and do more work similar to this within the district for the problems that we have because you're attacking one of the hardest ones I had two questions about and number to answer your question first you you're about where I expected since I wasn't here five years ago so I guess you're where I expect you to be so uh I and I I don't think I have advice for you you seem to be doing a wonderful job and uh I do have two questions though one was the the data simulations that you're talking about now you've been going for 5 years and now you're asking for data simulations you wouldn't I mean how does that is that are you're not getting them or you just haven't asked for them yet or how does that work out so the data that we have been presented is just a context of what the current system is right now um given the given where we're going in terms of what we would like to do to better align ENT policies with the racial educational Equity policies one of the things that members have requested it is if we do recommendation X so for hypothetical if we you know adjust the socioeconomic status waiting in the lottery if we you know bump it up by you know 10 percentage points how many more students will that get in a particular school so we recognize that we want to get more students in a number of schools but the question is what's kind of that suweet spot and so we want to kind of say if we can get more students what's the ideal recommendation we would like to make to make that potentially happen now was that have you
01h 15m 00s
done that preliminary work and said and talk to people about hey can can we actually do this do we have the capability to do it have you where's the whole thing stand right now with these recommendations on the data simulations I'd like to comment one of the things that we discovered do you want to come on over and so that they can get it on the record otherwise uh um have one chair over the people at home can't hear you speak thank you very much go ahead and identify yourself if you would I'm Tia Benjamin and people will know that I always have something to say I happen to be one of the original members of sacket and the thing that I wanted to say in response to your question is that these are not the first recommendations the original group made recommendations to the board that went nowhere so I think that what we're moving to in this effort is to get a way to strengthen our recommendations so that there will be action because you know I've been around for 5 years and I'm almost 80 years old so I don't plan on being around much longer and I want to be sure that we get some action uh this time and I think that's why we're looking to research and to find out what it is that actually exists and and how what we propose May uh have impact on change so that's what that's what that's all about thank you very much M thank you one more question okay go ahead uh the the other question I have is a little different in recommendation three which is accountability for Focus options which is tied I think to recommendation five which is the modifications as do you have information that talks specifically about why serve children choose these options less I mean have you looked at that and say Here's reasons within there's some reasons of course within the school system I'm then you've looked at those but what about the other reasons outside transportation problems and those types of things have you done any uh data Gathering or looking at that particular situation how that's one of the reasons we want to hold more conversations is that we do have more questions in mind to ask why why don't they choose these schools is it not appealing to them is it not relevant is and what are the other many reasons that I'm sure exist why they're not choosing these schools so you're saying that's a direction that you want to go yet that you haven't gone yet and off you go okay thank thank you that's a good direction to go can I just say we actually were um hoping that if other members of sacket want to speak and we're getting we're trying to get you a handheld mic but you can also if other people want to speak come on up and join the co-chairs just so because such A diversity of perspectives are in the group come on up and answer if you're so moved great hi I'm Gabrielle beliar and several things that we discussed when we looked at the data is the difference between the applicant pull in the lottery which is an typically an online system in English versus the hardship petitions which have a very different um racial and ethnic Outlook so when you look at the lottery and the time um particularly we talk about the focus option schools that you have to go and take a tour you have to sign so you have to have a lot of knowledge well in advance of the process and then get your application in online in February a lot of those spots are now filled in that Lottery prior to the hardships coming in then for families who learn about those opportunities the hardship applicant pull was just a complete flip in terms of the socioeconomic and um racial and ethnic makeup than the paper Lottery the other piece that we looked at is the transportation bar um the geographic sighting or location of the focus options and the cultural relevancy in terms of um the demand so those were just some of the broader context of what we looked at in this thank you than thank you hi thank you for your amazing and long work um with us greatly appreciated um I noticed in your report you clearly uh Focus quite a bit on Focus schools and you have a little bit of dialogue around Charter Schools um I was curious um as you go forward and you continue to do your work whether you will um be providing any recommendations similar to what you're doing on the focus option programs whether you would be looking also at the impact of charter schools I think we have about 10 in our district um the community based alternative programs and what those mean although that's much more high school and I know that you're really focused more on K8 but curious about that and then the
01h 20m 00s
final piece is open enrollment and what that means in terms of these recommendations because it kind of blows things up in a whole different way than what we've experienced in the past so just a couple of areas that I think at some point we we're going to need to kind of take into consideration as we're looking at these recommendations too so that's something we haven't directly talked about in some of our previous conversations but I think as we go forward in our next couple work we definitely maybe able to figure out if that's one of the major areas you want to take on I think one of the things you just talk about with the different kinds of schools that one I thing comes up in the context of choice is really about why families are really choosing those particular schools unlike choosing their neighborhood school so I think one of the fundamental tensions that has come up for me as a member over time is really round choice is how is that particular school going to better serve my child better so I think it's about you could have a portfolio of schools across the board but at the same time if your neighborhood school isn't going to serve that child better you should have choice to an extent or if you're going to put restrictions on the system how are you going to fundamentally ensure that like what we call out in our executive summary and our sacket process part of the report how are you going to fundamentally make sure that Services across the board are going to really hit that student to the best ability that they can whether it's culture relevant teachers reduce rate in disproportionate discipline Etc so there's a fundamental kind of relationship that inter place especially with the number of the alternative options that youve just talked about the one area in particular that I'm I'm very concerned about in all of this is the whole issue of open enrollment because if we restrict uh neighborhood to Neighborhood transfers um and yet we have some neighborhood schools that are under enrolled and we'd like to get that up how fair is it to offer enrollment to out of District folks versus in District folks and does that kind of blow up what you're trying to do in terms of having our schools um be representative of our our neighborhood communities and so it's a it's a it's a big issue I think as as we're looking at all of this so thank you so um I just have been a had the honor of attending a lot of your meetings and and watching observing your process over the last several months and I've just been um so impressed and um just just delighted and and honored by the the time and attention and and um depth of thought and diversity of perspectives that you've brought to this um I've just been kind of watching and then you know trying to my best to sort of give it the gist of it back to the board uh my board colleagues so hopefully it's not too big a surprise I was trying to sort of say this is sort of the questions they're wrestling with and here's here's some of the directions so yes you are where I expected you to be based on the last um meeting I went to and um I just you know again really want to appreciate um the work that you have done in in wrestling with this um we did and and and keeping with it over years as Miss Benjamin noted you know the years and years of trying to get some change in this district and still trying to come to the meetings and engage in the process and still have that hope and belief that something something will change so we had you know we had the audit back in 2006 I think it was um from the Flynn Blackmer AUD audit that um found that the what we are trying to achieve with our transfer system we are not accomplishing what the the um point of the transfer system and choice had not been well articulated and um that it was if anything exacerbating the patterns of um racial and class division that are present in our city and at the time the district said yes this is right we need to look at it and we have um many things have changed since then but nothing really fundamentally about our enrollment and transfer policies um although we did um certainly through High School System design make some changes that were in line with and I think reflectively some of the the second input so that was the second recommendations were included as part of high school system design yeah which was the first installment right so really and you know the major change though um that I would point to that I think really feels to me as if we're poised to make some um some thoughtful and important changes in our historical policies and practices is our racial educational Equity policy and and just sort of seeing you all again bringing your Revere P perspectives and using using the racial Equity l and um really trying to figure out what is best for all kids in our city and our system was just again an outstanding example um of of how to do this work and how to work with these tough issues so um deeply appreciate that I your values um I'm completely in agreement with your your value statements and um and I just I'm looking so in terms of advice for you I think it's you know we need to let staff um and the superintendent and her staff M through it love to hear some recommendations back from them as they as they work with you in terms of what
01h 25m 00s
could be some short-term medium-term longterm what needs more steady um I think the neighborhood to Neighborhood one as you would agree I'm sure like the the data simulations what could be how can we avoid unintended consequences of that given what we're we're trying to accomplish the same thing we want to make sure because this is so complex as you all well know after your many many hours of study um so and then of course we also need to um mesh with the District wide boundary framework and all that work that we're about to hear about next and that will also be ongoing so I guess knowing that we're winding down the school year which traditionally is kind of a pause in District work I think this year will be different and I'm hoping that we're not going to lose the great momentum that you have um that you have right now and um that we'll so that we can figure out a ways how can we keep this going how can we make sure that it's you know part of our work going forward that you've meshed we're meshing it in with the districtwide boundary framework and that there is that there is a followup that we can come back and whatever that timing might be that you know between the co-chairs and the superintendent to work out um what the timing could be for the board to hear your formal you know what your your for final recommendations are your intermediate ones your response and then and then our action um again perhaps partial short-term long-term whatever it might be whatever um we deem appropriate but I'm want there to be action and again I just appreciate um the depth and integrity of uh of your work and your report and um appreciate your service to the city and the children of the city can I um go ahead uh can I talk to director Regan's questions I don't think it's doing come on up button on the bottom you can just come up come on up and use the one up here sorry was it working just little they wereing okay technology is not my strong point um so I I think the the two questions you asked about Charters and um open enrollment um so I think it's fair to say that um we didn't actually consider Charters it was kind of taken off the table from the beginning um by by who or why do you know um I don't think I've I think we collectively decided it mostly because um I I think it was mostly because we had so many other things it was already so complicated um I mean I for one would be happy to to broaden it to include Charter Schools I don't know what my colleagues would think but um it is a different calculation um I I think I mean the the Dynamics are different uh in in some ways from Focus options um but I think it's certainly worth looking at particularly because charter schools have um have an outsized impact on certain parts of town um the other thing about Open Enrollment um I think it's important to note that um throughout our discussions um we were we were thinking about our recommendation in the context of uh districtwide boundary review so right now we have some schools that are very over enrolled and others that are very under enrolled and the theory is the Hope is that with the districtwide boundary review um those kinds of situations will will be resolved so I think the hope is that open enrollment won't really be a huge issue that's the hope everybody back here was wiggling in their chair wanting to say that we really didn't talk about charter schools because it it was not something we ever thought we had any control over therefore input was right right invalid at best and then since I have the mic in my hand um I I personally would really thank directors um Atkins and ran for coming to all of those meetings it's a lot of time on top of all the time that you're putting in and it mattered that you were there and paying attention so thank [Applause] you and and then I would just remind uh the board that while we mostly considered K8 in the last 15 months high schools did come in frequently and the enrollment and transfer office this year implemented what we familiarly call the vens and balancer which was a big change in transfer and enrollment policy and it did make a difference and it does seem
01h 30m 00s
to have been effective so there is potential to make change good yeah so can I just follow up on the charter school question the the reasons I was asking is if we're looking at ending neighborhood to Neighborhood transfers than if parents choose to want to move out and be still in the local community that would be one of their options and so it it does have some impact and the other thing is that we as a board are the group that says yes or no to Charter School applications and so it would be interesting to have you weigh in with us on that issue we have recently approved another Charter that's starting next year as an example um so it does have an impact certainly so that's that's why I was just asking if there had been much discussion or if there could be yeah just to follow up with that I mean I think that was for me one of the most um sobering um eye opening pieces as with hearing um because certainly I've been aware and mindful of the impact of neighborhood to Neighborhood transfers in the Vicious Cycle and program and enrollment and so forth and all the other pieces there but to hear from an African-American parent member of the committee um the issue that Allison was talking about in terms of using transfer to escape from a school where either the perception of the reality was that their child would be um either disciplined inappropriately or disrespected or that their family would not be welcome was um so that was um for me again that's one of that piece where and I know that you kept the hardship transfer um hardship request piece in there in your recommendation partly because of that but that's one of the ones where it's really to figure out you know the the balance there so that in so that in um you know so that we don't end up with an alternative we we're moving toward this alternative system of Charters that is outside our control that exacerbates in my opinion the very issue of trying to um um that undermines the strong neighborhood schools because of the loss of enrollment and parent energy and all the rest and thus program so anyway it was um I think you're absolutely right to to highlight it I I totally get why the committee just recognize it out legally and every way else is outside their perview but it's going to definitely going to have to be part of the discussion as we figure out what are some solutions going forward or what are some things we can pilot or test just as um Judy and her office piloted that Bon balance or um what are some things that we can just sort of this has been system has been around for a while there have been some tweaks and improvements but again using a racial Equity lens is new and um deeply necessary and important so we can figure out we we can we can figure something out we can make it work want to thank you Echo thanks uh for all the work that you all have done and I'm going to um answer your two questions and then I'm going to bridge on to a couple of other things but first I want to ask a question back to you um you mentioned that you're going to um do some listening sessions with African-American and Latino um families or organizations and as I think about our racial Equity policy I wonder if I don't remember seeing any Native American listening session and I think about our disparities and our education policy I'm just curious can you talk to me a little bit of your thinking about that and have there been listening sessions or are we interested in that are you interested in that because I'm interested in that I guess I would I'm definitely interested I think our biggest question is how can we actually get everything in that we're saying that we want to get done I would if we can I would love absolutely love to make it happen Okay we prioritize to those three groups Latino um Asian Pacific and African-American uh they just sort of rose to the top for us but it wasn't by any means of excluding any other groups and we have you know we would love to do as many listening sessions as we can for some reason we prioritize those three for as soon as possible and then move on from there I'm just thinking about the families that have historically not been served that it it's that kind of automatic pilot that that gets us to to places so thank you um are are you where I expected you to be um no um and just partly because this felt um I know that it's preliminary recommendations this felt like a catalog a really thorough catalog of places where we knew things that we knew kind of anecdotally or all along um and I guess I was expecting to um maybe have a little bit more of a straw man or a little bit more push of this is the direction we're heading and and why um so I'll just share that it's again not a negative feedback but um and it literally felt like a catalog 51 um good yeah it was great um but so it just made me one you have there's a lot to be done in the next three months and I don't want it to to surprise the community because I I think again you you pointed out the different people are in different starting points so maybe that's the District boundary riew and I guess I was also um what advice do I
01h 35m 00s
have as you move toward final recommendations I guess um I I think this is where the The District boundary for me and the the enrollment and transfer begin to to mesh and I'm really glad that we have them here is um the districtwide boundary group in their report talked about how this can be a very political process there's this feeling in the district that the last loudest voice kind of Rises to the top um which is I guess part of why I was hoping that this might push that a little bit so that we had time to hear those loud voices and work through them with your help um but I guess it's just a request to you all that you guys have been deeply emerged in this work for 5 years um maybe longer um even if sacket wasn't officially formed um that we're going to need your support with whatever direction we have um because again as the districtwide boundary um three months is a really short time to get the penetration in a community for a message that we're so inated with messages it's so important and the more people we have to help with that um because we all know that this is um this could be politically a potential um difficult and challenging piece and I don't want to see it I want to take the action um that that needs to happen for our students and going back to the the um again the districtwide I felt like they they just coalesced with each other so well that um and you called it out in your report the lack of clarity what the purpose is for our enrollment transfer I'm I didn't see much in there about what it was I I see that we're aligning this with our um racial Equity policy but is if if enrollment and transfer is to achieve racial Equity I'd be curious to hear whether or not that's the strongest lever or how that interplays or are is there a purpose that we should be looking for something that you've come across in your that this is really what you're going for um because I I thought it was just really um powerful to hear that there's a lack of clarity we're doing dual language immersion programs and sometimes it feels a little bit arbitrary we look at the data we say we're going to use um bigger highest population or most significant population numbers but the clarity um sometimes escapes me and so I appreciated you calling that out um and you pointed out direct dragons and you you just all said um how do we make sure that we have a system where people aren't making the choice to escape something um because I think that's we all intuitively do that and my worry with this Choice whether it's open enrollment is that the fact of the matter is there's a certain segment of our population however that you want to cut that or slice that that really doesn't have any choice their choice is to send their child to public school for a variety of reasons and then there are other people in our community for whom we can never take a choice away they will always have other options and how do we make sure um because I think we're strong in having a majority of people still sending their students to public school in Portland um how do we how do we balance that and so I didn't see much about that um I I saw some of the history of how we got here about there was a time when we were trying not to have middle middle class flight um white middle class flight um and we're trying to move beyond that uh and at the same time we want to make sure that all families feel like they have a good option in their neighborhood and then what are the what are the focus options or what are the immersion programs what what is their role what what are we trying to achieve with them so thank you all for this um and again I I hope that you will um oh I also wanted to mention I really appreciate the attention to special education the idea of moving us towards Universal Design it's the only way that we make this an equitable system and we have to change the policy to at least acknowledge that there are a certain segment of families that don't have that option we don't even give them that option right now um so thank you for highlighting that and calling that out um so thanks what I want to say you're coming about people leaving yeah if you have good schools who's going to walk away from a good school right and and go somewhere is to create something else so we've got to have good schools my worry with that if I sorry can perspect I know families that are leaving good schools right now and I get a lot of variety of reasons of why families choose different schools so that's the part that's that's hard for me is that we have lots of good schools and I still see people leaving um but you're absolutely right people aren't going to walk away from what they consider a good school um first uh thank you director bile as uh Native American and tribal member I um it's nice not to be the one expected to ask the question about have you talk to the Native American Community um I think it is an important uh an important piece particularly uh as a historically underserved community so
01h 40m 00s
I would second that um the first answer to your question I think is yes uh and you know I think back 15 or so months ago when uh this was a uh recommendation that emerged out of um the Jefferson uh enrollment balancing and uh because it felt so awkward to have uh policies and practices that were no longer consistent with what or I should say practices that were no longer consistent with what the current policies were including the racial educational Equity policy um but we were still implementing them as uh as such so uh and at the time also we were looking at you know a cluster by cluster enrollment and balancing tweaking here and there uh which uh put each cluster within in danger of is there a school that's going to be closed or something that's going to happen looking at it this way more holistically I think is appropriate and all of you have taken on that uh that challenge uh and thank you so much for doing so I want to um I think the devil is in the details in this and uh whether it's issues of uh ending the uh the lottery um transfers neighbor to Neighborhood to neighborhood I think uh uh Bobby's comment is is right on how do we how do we prioritize the students with our within our own District um but I also want to really appreciate that there's some even some Nuance in that that uh and the the comments that were made in terms of the safety of students or whether it's perceived or not those are very real uh across communities of color and if we're not taking that into consideration and uh using that as an opportunity to uh to better educate the other the other alternative is uh is in fact to see a lot of more students dropping out and uh because if the parents don't get an opportunity to engage and to to make that change the students will make that change and it oftentimes isn't one that um that is too favorable uh at least in in my experience so I appreciate that that nuanced approach to this um and I'm eager to to look at the final recommendations I don't have any suggestions in terms of what to look at further except for uh some of that more authentic engagement uh that you've that you've done already but uh but I'm eager to see what those final recommendations are and again how we can begin to implement those uh because I think you've done the hard sort of backbreaking Labor that that you've been charged to do so thank you Andrew you uh so first of all this is a fantastic report I have to say uh it's really exciting things like this because a lot of times I feel like on this board I I read things from staffs and sometimes you can almost feel the disconnect from my perspective and theirs but with this I really felt like it was a real genuine look at what was happening I could actually I was reading things and I was like wow I actually get it and uh so while I haven't been on this board long enough to really say uh you know you're where I expected to be or not uh and I don't have a bunch of advice but I would just say uh you know continue to do what you're doing and I would just you know I talk with a few of you actually regularly about a variety of issues but I would love to hear from all of you because the level of work that you're engaged in it's not just about enrollment and transfer it's really a systematic look and so I would just love to hear from all of you more so thank you thank you that's an inspiring comment thank you for that others Tom uh yeah just I have a question You' mentioned one of their recommendations was was unanimous and so I was curious to know um about the other recommendations and if there're maybe you could add give a little um texture to to those in terms of different opinions uh the first one strategic focus on neighborhood schools I would say unanimous uh ending neighborhood to neighbor neighborhood Lottery transfers I would say unanimous uh account ility for Focus if they say no trouble show up hands show up hands uh probably Focus options schools had the most diversity of opinions uh ranging from people saying um take out focus option schools in favor of strengthening neighborhood schools to the other end of the spectrum people saying there is room for Focus option schools in a healthy robust system uh but unanimous in the agreement that uh the way they are existing now and not representative of the student demographics of this District um are not
01h 45m 00s
acceptable so unanimous in that aspect of it the one thing that I'll add was prior to our actual fing issuing report we did one final straw poll of the membership of where do they how well do they support the existing report in the format that you've all seen and that ended of 15 members 13 in support one neutral and one did not support in the current firm so there was strong consensus across the board that the committee veres the than the preliminary package that we have before you thank you any others did you want me to go on yes do a language immersion um uh support for expansion um with careful thinking about sighting and location I would say unanimous modification of the focus option Lottery uh unanimous that changes have to happen EXA what changes or how we have a lot of questions still to answer supporting students with disabilities uh unanimous and I I think um perhaps the reason that there are only six recommendations we had many many more that we talked about is that we were really um bringing rising to the top what we all really agreed on at this moment in time so there's strong support yese so um there's two areas right off the top of my head where I can see some natural tensions or some even direct conflicts and recommendations um and I'm I could name them if you want uh one would one obvious one is expanding dual language immersion programs and yet on the other hand not doing neighborhood to Neighborhood transfers and so if you have a student here who speaks this language they can't go over here um and be served by that program that's a really obvious one go ahead so would that be considered a focus option or would that be consider yeah so we one one of the issues we deal with is that there's no clear nomenclature about this different type of schools so when we're talking about neighborhood schools we're talking about either schools that don't have any kind of other special program like immersion or okay um like at hay Hurst with Odyssey uh or we're talking about the neighborhood side of our hybrid schools that have a neighborhood and an immersion okay ises that clarify so you're looking very specifically at Focus programs as opposed to focus schools and and sometimes when we say Focus option we mean we include the immersion programs in there and sometimes we're talking about I think we've used the word pure Focus option which are schools that are entirely Lottery lottery based which includes Richmond but um and then the four other and because again when you look at Focus option programs which you've typically said are majority White English speaking well all of a sudden if you're throwing immersion programs into that you're getting a completely different definition okay so maybe as you go some way to kind of clarify maybe you could help us with that I'd be happy to I'd be happy well that was the other thing I was going to say is that we're it sounds like what you're asking for is a superintendence feedback and you're getting some feedback from us but I would love to see the board do a whole work session um on this issue to help provide feedback I mean that would we'll definitely do that it's just this is this is a different time this is to hear from them we're going to do that okay well that wasn't that wasn't clear to me I think I sent a memo out to everybody about the what we were going to do from here on out right cludes work sessions can can I throw something on the table yes as you think about that session um some of us on the committee uh and I will say including me um would like to see the district come out with a a a plan to make immersion available to every student who wants it in Portland yes great you would be the only ones yay I I think I think there's many of us would be there too we are all channeling Dave Porter woohoo so another um ju so just another tension that I had at least picked up is when you were talking about um your recommendation number six supporting students with disabilities you specifically said that you Advocate that preference be granted for siblings to have the option to join them and on the other hand it sounded like you're you're struggling with the whole sibling preference issue because a lot of times that locks out historically underserved students from being able to be there and so again that's it's just one of those natural conflicts and I'm not asking for
01h 50m 00s
any answers I'm just realizing that it's a it's tough and I'd love for us to help you sort through some of that as you go yeah the The Sibling preference really uh comes to bear in the the pure Focus option programs uh and I think there's some examples in there around Winter Haven for example where where siblings take up a huge chunk of if if you don't have a sibling in there it's really hard to get but then it gets and I think Charter Schools you often see that too but I think it then gets into the whole value that we place on keeping families together and you know that that isn't one that was specifically addressed in here I don't believe but it would be one worthwhile to explore further so and there was lots of discussion I mean not not speak for you guys but there was lots of discussion about that as well um you know I I just also want to Echo um direct bl's appreciation for the focus on special education students and I don't want that to be lost in this um that so maybe the neighbor neighborhood and the focus option piece might get more attention and I want to make sure we follow through and because um just the issue and hearing from the impacted parents around the the lack of a coherent um feeder system and the bumping and all those things that um that have gone on for years and years and so um I guess you know in terms of differentiating resources if you will through the um racial through the equity policy differentiating access and stability opportunities for um um students with disabilities and their families um was the value I heard in that yeah and that was really the core of our special education recommendation was that we heard from families that get pushed from one cluster to another and that get yanked back into their neighborhood and really yanked out of whatever Community they start to get set up um that we really want that kind of guarantee that you can stay in your cluster that service will be there and that's that's a whole uh that's a whole plan for how how we support uh our kids with special needs sure go for it this goes back to I don't know if it's advice but I'll just leave you with a question that I hope you guys are considering what your role is um as I mentioned before once you make your recommendations um as you pointed out there's a diversity of opinion um and probably everybody will not wholeheartedly agree with with every one of your recommendations or we'll think there are other additional recommendations and um to have people as informed and as connected with the communities as you are I just I hope that you'll spend some time thinking about what the role is that if you wind up not getting a recommendation that you thought are you going to spend time Gathering up all the people you know that believe with you to politicize the the process more or is it a consensus piece where we all agree to support these and then whoever and I don't know what the answer to that is but I just I hope you spend some time thinking about that because it'll be important in how we begin to process and how our community processes that with us okay just a couple comments um first of all thank you very much to all the members of the committee it's been a long Hall I know for all of you and appreciate that and still a little bit ways to go and or a lot to go we'll see um and second I want to thank Ruth for your regular updates for us after every meeting she attended she was sending uh notices out to all of us about what happened and that that has been very very helpful great job as aa's on there um so are let's see are we where you expected us to be you know I didn't have any really strong expectations but I was very hopeful that you would be done so so I know that you're working toward that and I appreciate that and I would I think Echo a couple of other people who said don't take your foot off the gas let's just keep moving forward with this I know that it's summer and sometimes we kind of kick back a little bit but I think for the sake of our families uh we need to keep moving this forward uh and not slow down um what more would I let's see what advice do you have as we move toward final recommendations so I had a couple of things I I could Echo all of my colleagues on a lot of what they said and I do um but I would I would make a couple of comments one is and I think it's kind of the overarching issue that we have here and that is you know what is the purpose of the enrollment and transfer policy so is it to create strong neighborhood schools is it to provide racial Equity is it to make sure that every child has uh an equal opportunity I mean we I think we as a board as we receive your recommendations um I'm hoping that you have a recommendation on that and that we can also uh weigh in on that and and consider that recommendation um but I think that's really the overarching issue that we have to get to before we can talk about all of these other recommendations that you've given us so um some of the things that I was thinking about as you were talking um one was um
01h 55m 00s
The Sibling preference issue I'd like to see more information on that um especially at uh non-focus schools of course you're already saying no neighborhood to Neighborhood transfer so that may do away with that issue um except that we still will have and I guess that's another one of the issues how do you implement this do you implement it immediately and from now on there's no sibling trans sibling preference or does it go go ahead sorry to interrupt just to clarify our recommendation is that there are no longer neighborhood to Neighborhood transfers through the lottery hardship petitions will always be an important part so just tocl and the reason that sibling preference isn't in there is that we really need to hear from broad communities um before we as a group can even start to land so don't think we didn't think about that no I'm just saying the things that I didn't see that I'm interested in so that's great thank you very much for that um I was uh intrigued by everybody's interest in the Benson uh bucket or Benson I always say Benson balancer I think Benson bubblers you know um um because I think that's also an intriguing solution and have been kind of a proponent of that for quite some time so I was very happy to see it this year bubblers are you like the bubbler okay um and then I would be interested in um if you have research or are you looking into other school districts on some of these issues you know what what do lotteries look like in other districts especially districts that seem to be doing them successfully um what does a what's a total Choice District look like I was reading some information not too long ago I think it was about Denver you know what does it what does it look like if there are no neighborhood boundaries or go the other way what does it look like if there are total neighborhood boundaries so I'm kind of interested in more information that you all gather on that and um the um examples that you can bring provide to us um and then finally I think uh and I saw it a little bit in your report I think that uh one of the issues for us as a board is K8 K5 middle schools um I think that continues to be an issue in our community um how long has it been 10 10 years I think I saw there it's been quite a while um but I it it still comes up consistently um especially when I I can't remember if it was in the PSU report or in this report but um about um enrollment and the ability to provide program um especially in our k8s so um I think that's an issue that will play into this as well um and then finally uh I do want to thank you for uh your work again and um I Echo director bile about um when we finish this work I I don't know if this work is ever finished but when we finished this part um hope that we will be able to um have you as people who are working with us to um see this to the end um and can be our ambassadors in the community as well as us supporting the recommendations that you made because you are the community that we have gathered to help us make these decisions and that's very important to us so um I think that's it thank you very very much I'd like to say something to uh something that director Bal asked last time that you asked about um how how representative are the decisions that we make and do we look for consensus so I just wanted to tell you that this is a super committed group obviously 30 meetings and they're still here still standing and it's a super committed group who has a lot of strong opinions and we have also gone through the courageous conversations about race training so we are all very familiar with the concept of multiple perspectives and this group brings the multiple perspectives and we honor them all so uh we did not look for consensus we looked for where cons consensus existed but we didn't force it so just to let you know that all perspectives were brought forward honored and presented in the report thank you that's great thank you actually the other thing I'd add to that is people I've witnessed people moving each other so even where people came in with really um you know strong beliefs of what they thought they believed people are really listening to other perspectives that are emerging in the course of the discussions and and it it's moved I mean people's thought process has really evolved as being part of this committee so I have been impressed with with that so um I'm going to just add one other thing because we're about ready to segue into part two which is the desde boundary review is um so sacket was specifically looking at our en norment and transfer policies but they will all have also been cross um informing each other as we're getting doing the analysis of how we um develop a process to do a districtwide boundary review so this has been like parallel processes but informing one another intentionally so so um and the fact that we're hearing both of those reports here tonight really important cuz you're
02h 00m 00s
going to feel the connectivity here between the two processes uh and the last one I'll say is um the distinction between the five years that sacket has been together as a body and the this charge is just the last 15 months so they've not been working on this charge for five years this charge was the last 15 months no the 5 years means we've had a group trying to Grapple with enrollment transfer issues over a period of 5 years but the last thing they really developed recommendations about was high school system design and you can feel continuity of themes in terms of strong n desire for strong neighborhood schools as a really core value in both of these processes so it's been helpful to have um people who've been immersed in this um have and immersed in the complexity of this informing both processes so so thank you very much for your report and I'm hoping you're sticking around for part two here so thanks great thank you both thank you to the whole committee okay so um next actually Judy Brennan and John Isaacs are going to come on up again we've got um a number of people um so Phil keyling and Wendy Willis and Shannon gzowski whose name I can't really say well um but both from the Portland State University Center for Public Service and the national policy consensus Center who have been partnering with PPS to look at how we would approach uh and what's an organizational and stakeholder Readiness assessment I'm sorry go ahead excuse me I'll wait for the side talk to be completed we were going to take a short break between the two yeah do you want to take a short break if I would like to if that then let's can we do that let's do that give them a couple of minutes to come down just like three minutes is what we need okay thanks [Music] sorry I don't think my is actually try to so Carol's mic is not working is this one is my mic on there there we go all right okay as one of the things we've referenced multiple times through this conversation is at the end so Jefferson enrollment balancing was the last time we actually looked um and we've done this cluster by cluster across the district but during the Jefferson enrollment and Bing conversation we concluded with um the the strong sentiment that what we needed to do is really look at this districtwide which is like both daunting and right so what we did was we um said okay we've got to figure out how we would go about looking at boundaries as an entire District holistically um so what we did was we approached Portland State um Center for Public Service and said would you think about this with us and partner with us and we explored it a little bit and then they agreed to come on as a partner and really um help us pick apart what it would actually take for us to do this uh and give us some options about how we might do the process so we've just completed with them and with the national policy consensus Center the first phase of this project looking at what the process is that we would use so tonight we're going to walk through that um assessment that's both a stakeholder and organizational readiness assessment which is um phase one and John Isaacs and Judy Brennan will walk us through and intro introduce um the players to come on up and talk to us more about that thank you super again John isacs uh I'm the uh chief of communications and public affairs and uh it's my pleasure to introduce uh Phil keasling who's the executive director of the Portland State University Center for Public Service Wendy Willis who's the director of the national policy consensus Center and Shan Shannon gzowski who was the sort of the person who kept the whole process moving as we worked on this assessment uh she's a graduate student in the um uh Mark Hatfield School government um I just want to say that I really appreciated the board's comments about uh sacket and it being a model for how we do community involvement around a tough issue um it's absolutely correct and I would say that the work that the PSU team has done on this Readiness assessment for districtwide boundary review is a model for how we partner with outside experts on how we uh can best tackle a very a truly difficult ult and challenging um of uh topics such as districtwide boundary review um the
02h 05m 00s
report is an incredible report that makes very strong recommendations that involves uh um every part of the PPS community and stakeholders and it's something that I personally learned a lot from and I encourage everybody who's watching tonight to read it because it will really tells you where we're headed as a district and makes the case for why we have to be looking at districtwide boundary review so with that I want to invite the team up here and they will walk through your report and answer your questions good evening members of the board I'm Phil keasling this is Wendy Willis and Shannon Grabowski is here answer questions um after we get done with a brief presentation we of course are here with the second catalog that you have uh popped on your table tonight um it of course follows sack's truly excellent report which recommended a number of specific policy changes in directions in contrast uh our work is focused on process and compared to sackett's journey to date with districtwide boundary review we're still at the suitca suitcase packing stage with this one but as sackett's important work illustrates district-wide boundary review is inevitably intertwined with enrollment and transfer not to mention many other policies how can we best use existing and new school facilities what's the right size and configuration of particular programs how do we ensure sufficient resources and educational quality to all neighborhood-based schools and other schools and their diversity of students just a few of the questions and the complexity is at times mind-numbing as one person described it it's like a Rubik's Cube except the colors keep changing on you now PPS has made does of School boundary adjustments in recent years in many cases adids wrenching decisions about neighborhood school closures and reconfigurations but this is PPS is first districtwide boundary review in recent memory and we've appreciated the chance to work with the district on this relatively new and unchartered terrain our full report can be divided into roughly two main sections first the organizational Readiness assessment for embarking on this journey so we closely examined there demographic changes board policies and rules and data related to PPS enrollment and attendance and looked at the experience of 14 other districts in Oregon and around the US second how best to engage the larger Portland Community in this important task we conducted dozens of meetings uh uh representing 21 organizations and involving more than 100 community members I'll focus on the first set of issues and Wendy will focus on the latter but first the brief answers to three very core questions does PPS really have to do districtwide boundary review absolutely yes as an organization is PPS ready not quite yet but it can and must be soon and perhaps most important how does the larger Portland Public School Community view this challenge well as Wendy will elaborate we found respondents many of them unclear about the need and purpose a bit wary even skeptical about the district but open a meaningful engagement provided the district is clear about its goals and earns their trust so to the first question the clear even urgent need for districtwide boundary review we know about projected K through 12 enrollments today they're 3,000 above what we thought just six or seven years ago by 201718 the district my top 50,000 students within a decade 55,000 or more are plausible now this is happy news and it's driven by important and relatively recent changes is it more people deciding not to attend private school and other options no that's held pretty steady but what demographers note is that young adults aren't just choosing to move to and remain in urban settings like Portland in record numbers most significantly they're having children markedly later in their lives and thus no longer leaving in relative droves for the suburbs once that happens they're staying put and choosing to send their kids to public Portland Public Schools drop down to the school cluster in individual School levels and the need for boundary review becomes even been clear almost 40% of Portland Public School students now attend a school that
02h 10m 00s
based on current definitions in use are either over enrolled or under enrolled Visa what's considered appropriate for Quality program and reach neighborhood School capture rates vary considerably 11 schools are attracting 80% or more of their neighborhood students that are enrolled in Portland Public Schools yet seven at the other end attract 50% or fewer and the total enrolled population Within These neighborhood school catchment areas vary even more dramatically in five there are 300 or fewer students within this geographic area while four contained more than 700 students and one with over a thousand Decades of boundary adjustments largely driven by declining enrollments and then often only when other en options seem exhausted have left a map of widely varying mismatches between student enrollments and the physical capacity of actual buildings and between school configuration and program resources in optimal size second as to Readiness even under the best of circumstances districtwide boundary review poses a tough and difficult set of challenges to successfully navigate the community concerns administrative complexities and controversies inherent in this the first priority is for Portland Public Schools to display Clarity and alignment of its own internal policies procedures and roles so that it can then construct a clear and well-executed process of deliberate Community engagement and transparent commun transparent decision making much of this Clarity yet doesn't exist or at least and this is perhaps more important is not seen to exist by a wide swath of parents and community members in the past sometimes PPS has relied on short-term facility based changes to deal with enrollment pressures thereby avoiding controversial boundary adjustments or larger changes this has led some community members quote we're not over enrolled we're under facility as one put it during a public meeting to embrace the false notion that School boundaries somehow can or should be permanent when just the opposite is true in other cases reconfiguration of school grade levels has been used to help balance enrollment instill others the policy tool of creating locating special F special Focus programs an approach that might relieve overcrowding in some school clusters while increasing the use of otherwise vacant classrooms but it can also lead to concerns as the sacket report demonstrates about undermining neighborhood-based programs and making worse the district's challenges on goals such as racial and educational Equity policy regardless of the educational merits of such decisions over the years a clear Patchwork has emerged not to mention many community members believing that the final results are too often based not on what's best for the entire system but on which Community has more ability to articulate their Grievances and mobilize political pressure to minimize disruption as a way to get things done so this need for intern internal Clarity and Alignment is underscored by looking at the experiences in 14 other districts here and across the country no we didn't find a Playbook that says how to succeed a districtwide boundary review Without Really Trying there isn't one but we heard many common themes whether we look in Hillsboro OR Salem Kaiser here in Oregon or to places like Tampa Seattle Denver Minneapolis or elsewhere some of those themes a adopt values with Community input that's genuine and be patient with the process to ensure that that Community input is truly reflective of the community at large not just its best organized and articulate components let values and a strong citizen-led group or groups precede even the proposing of any specific boundary lines and Maps fully understand your facility and program needs and challenges before launching so you can articulate what's in and maybe what's outside bounds before the discussion starts and have at hand readily accessible data and key information in a format that's digestible and that community members can be expected to ask for PPS has a huge and great capability around data so much of this already exists but how do you put it into the right format so how quickly can the process be launched and concluded that dep depends on how PSU leadership explicitly chooses the scope
02h 15m 00s
and reach of the process a report offers a Continuum of options on one end to see this primarily as a mathematical challenge a data driven process mainly to rebalance student enrollments that are out of whack and many are in some crisis situations exist at a different end of the Continuum a much more robust Community engagement process that brings in not just the potential applications of issues like uh transfer and enrollment but um School configurations capture rate special Focus program and of course the district's racial and educational Equity Mission I think the easiest approach a 20156 school year implementation date might well be practical practicable but a more robust process We Believe would likely take longer again the options we discuss are hardly exhaustive but we recommend that the leadership of Portland Public Schools decide on that by this fall school year finally before turning it over to Wendy a word about how once is not enough yes it will be hard and contentious but in addition to finalizing the next boundaries for the district it's important to build a framework capable of dealing with ongoing boundary adjustments year in and year out community members should expect future boundary adjustments as Portland changes and as the needs and makeup of the community change but also have confidence that such reviews will operate according to agreed upon and advanced values criteria and rules so while there will be contention and debate and disagreement there will not be surprises in a sense of of getting off the rails I'll now turn it over to my colleague Wendy Willis to describe in a bit more detail the community interviews we conducted and and more on thoughts and observations on how best to engage the community in this important task great thank you thank you Phil and thank you um for having us this evening many of the things I'm going to tell you and that are reflected in the report are implicit in the remarks that Phil just made and some of the recommendations but I think probably some of the things that you might be most interested in or is what the community had to say about this process so I thought I would give you a little bit more detail about that first of all I wanted um want to remind you that the the interviews that we did over the last few months and the hundred people that we talked to was not the engagement itself but was rather to try to talk to a a broad range of people in a very short period of time um about how they thought the community um would like to be engaged in this process and the Readiness of the community to be um to be involved so I will um remind you of that it was not an exhaustive set of interviews um and uh uh but it was uh but it was somewhat representative so to uh toer Phil had to say that the community largely is willing to engage with Portland Public Schools and is eager eager to have input on districtwide Boundary review and that's particularly among community members who feel like they have something particular to gain or lose in other words who thinks that their school or School Community might be affected directly by the initial set of boundary review uh boundary changes um that said though there's kind of a mixed level of understanding of what both what bound what district-wide boundary review might mean and what it might mean for them um because it's not been a part of standard practice there's a wide uh range of definitions about what districtwide boundary review might be um and and we heard from a number of community members and and families that if they were to get involved and they were to ask their community members to participate it would have to clearly be tied to academic opportunity and how does how how does boundary review affect um academic opportunity uh also we found that um as we've as as Phil mentioned that that people's people are interested in the the whole academic opportunity for their child so boundary review and enrollment and transfer are uh intertwined for them and and distinguishing between the two of them was not something that people were really particularly interested in doing um and and and on in the bad news Department uh some of that willingness and eagerness to participate is based um somewhat by opportunity but largely by fear and mistrust in each conversation um past District decisions were raised um particularly the one that director nolles pointed out about the decision to go to k to8 um uh K to8 schools so that that is something that was mentioned in virtually every conversation and I think you can expect that will be mentioned again in any um broad Community engagement that is to happen there also is a um a craving for Clear sideboards to any engagement what's in bounds and what's out of bounds and what what when what the input will mean so transparency would be Central and I think that's one of the main reasons why uh we recommended a phase of really trying to figure out some alignment within within
02h 20m 00s
the district before going out to a broad Community process and again um to reiterate there's a belief that even if the process is perfect um and is designed ideally that communities with power and influence can work around that process and get what they need in the end so there's that sort of perception to overcome in any process that's designed and executed I think there's a similar concern that um boundary review alone cannot address Equity concerns there are there's widespread concern about opportunity Gap but wondering what um what boundary uh review can do without addressing School offering School configuration enrollment and transfer as well so that those those um additional concerns are on the table finally even though there is a willingness to Eng engage and a and a broad willingness to engage the infrastructure structure to do so is and to do so quickly is mixed so some schools and some communities are in a position to respond very quickly if there is um a process that's designed to be executed between now and next winter that is not uniform across um across buildings obviously across communities so historically underrepresented and communities of color have um a variety of capacities to um to participate in this because of issues like mistrust issues like PRI uh previous decisions so I think that's when Phil says patience is key some of that is to rebuild some of the trust um amongst communities um and the district um I so given that what happens over the next 90 days to um to to help inform your decision about which of the along this Continuum what's the best thing to do about districtwide boundary review what we hope to do in the next 90 days is work with kpps staff and hopefully all of you and um to align the goals for any public process and to make a recommendation on what's most feasible and productive for Community engagement um given the goals that that um you all decide on similarly continue conversations with the members of sacket to determine what their future work will be and to see if we can align Outreach and engagement efforts where appropriate especially that's especially true given that the intertwined nature of boundary review and enrollment and transfer in the Public's treatment of the issues to create a data pack that has easy access to facts and policies for reference that will um influence the Public's participation in this in any process that goes forward finally to be in in anticipation of some process begin work working on expanding the community organizing infrastructure that means go deeper into determining where there is organizing capacity and where there are gaps so that if and when PPS begins a community engagement process there will be an infrastructure in place across all communities that that ensures equal access to the process in particular we will be asking communities how they would like to be engaged around this issue and similar ones in the future so with that we welcome any questions and comments feedback and and um and suggestions that you might have MERS anybody yes thank you again for this report and I'm not going to go into all my comments but I really appreciate all the areas that you highlighted as far as the issues that we face with Community Trust the the feedback that you heard I'm not sure where you got it but that the board potentially expressed an interest in using this as a reset to rebuild that trust um and how we engage differently with our community um so I just really appreciate that whole option but I just had a what I think might be a quick question I think Wendy you just said that the the community isn't in isn't interested or doesn't really see a difference between District boundary review View and enrollment and transfer which I think is true at the public like they all it's part of the same question for them so the question is um do you have a recommendation or thoughts about because they're going to come to us with recommendations potentially a year before we have our act together to go out to the community within districtwide boundary should those two align because we're artificially forcing the two apart do you have thoughts uh my take on that is that that hopefully the next 90 days will be telling in that and it may be that there are um recommendations that sacket brings forward that really aren't as intertwined as some of the others and so you know I can imagine a scenario where some of the questions that sacket is grappling with are part of District wide bound review and some are going forward in a package for decision right away so I think and I think that's a question we would like feedback from you on um that's really a decision that you'll have to make and that superintendent Smith will need to make about how how you want to parse those things I think the thing we're here to tell you though is as parents and decision makers for kids people don't see those things as
02h 25m 00s
distinct others no no question thank you so much for this um really meaty and insightful report another one the second one of the night so it's great um and I think you know for me that I really appreciated your articulation and reminder that we need to get that internal Clarity and to get our values and policy framework established as well as the sideboards as you call it for what and um what is and what isn't going to be on the table established and clear with ourselves with staff and the public before we go forth in whatever time frame it might be so that was really helpful exactly the kind of external kind of um reality check and expertise that we were looking for from you so I really appreciate that and um again you know just my concern being that the just the way the time worked out that we are going into the traditional downtime for the district for rare I think the one time I can recall a really significant summertime Community engagement was around the superintendent search process when we went out and actually had lovely a bit warm but lovely um meetings um that were very effective because we got an awesome C we heard we heard what what type of person the community wanted through that process so um so it's not normal practice for us to be taking on almost anything let alone something of this magnitude after what has been a pretty exhausting and challenging and huge year for this District so I'm just it's just that note of caution and concern of um how wanting to keep this momentum going but how do we do that want to make sure that we figure out and that we too don't um slack off right um so I guess you know I know the co-chairs and the superintendent have already been talking about this but just wanted to really um be clear that we're going to very soon have kind of mapped out what are what are our works sessions are are times together to figure this out going to be so that we can reach your recommended drop dead date of September to get this figured out of how we're going to proceed and what the kind of the road map is going to be so that's that's my big piece and um I think um you know really to be able to do to talk about the enrollment balancing with the racial Equity lands thinking about who is affected by so I'm just you know you know you talked about districts that did math matical models and did many of them and then were able to win on them down and just trying to figure out is there a way to do that process that combines sort of the mathematical with the qualitative um Equity lens of who is affected by this who is who would be you know what what would be unintended consequences of it but um again until we have done that upfront work of figuring out the clarity and of purpose from what we're trying to accomplish and what our values are we we can't get into that into the maps and into the analysis um trying to think is there anything else I wanted to say I think that was oh the other piece too would be be and I'm sure you're going to do this but just as we go very soon to have a reminder from staff about what were those most absolutely critical over particularly over enrollment um schools where it was really the most urgent need so again trying to figure as we try to wrestle with that move quickly to relieve the most urgent issues versus take longer to do the process right and yet we're not doing it right if we're leaving those schools hanging for another whole year after keep after telling them we're going to get to it we're going to get to it so um that was you know the real conundrum in reading a report of trying to figure needing to weigh in together and with staff and with you all to try to figure out what is that best pathway forward what time would would make the most sense thank you thank you excellent thoughts M thank you very much uh I I think um I have a couple of comments one you've said some highly inflammatory things uh one being that uh it isn't just a one-time thing uh enrollment balancing and the other one is uh sort of the uh the boundaries uh are not something that's permanent and um I think both of those things are going to force us into answering an important question and that is how tolerant is our community with change and how tolerant are we with discomfort and I think uh in terms of our district and our leadership on the board it's going to be the same question how tolerant are we with discomfort and change um and I would encourage us at this at this point to uh be open about and maybe bring in some tolerance uh to that um there's another thing that I wanted to mention too that I think is a a really important one one and that is uh Phil you mentioned sort of the the massive amount of data and
02h 30m 00s
information that we have access to and really a an unclear and unprecise and and un understandable mechanism to deliver that information to the community and I think that is I want to point that out because I think that's that's a concern that I hear over and over again um and I think I'm pointing it out because I think we have a real sincere obligation as a as an organization to provide information in a clear concise way to our community that that is digestable and that people can understand and uh and in that obligation um I think it really comes down in my opinion to customer service uh who are we serving and how are we providing that that service um makes a difference uh but I want to say I appreciate and that all of this is going to be you know the disc is going to be probably even more uncomfortable because of some of the trust issues that you've you've brought up uh that I think we're all we all talk about it uh I think we're all aware of it uh the other piece that I think is going to be helpful for me is uh knowing some of these Dynamics exist I'm a proponent of if we're not good at something how can we engage uh either organizations or Partners who can help us aeve achieve that that outcome and what you're asking I think is really a an outcome that is is desperately needed and one that we're going to have as an organization we're going to have a hard time achieving because of some of those issues you described so who do we engage in the process and maybe it's you all but who do we engage in the process around Community engagement around really creating some authenticity behind how we how we communicate our data how we communicate the issues and the challenges whe that they be um conflicting or supportive of one another so that's my sort of out there question of who can help us do that greats Tom just uh all I'll say is thank you I mean you really you told it like you saw it and uh that's important for us and I think you you've laid out a great road map for us to go and continue on so thank you thank you uh I would also say thank you and I think that as a board member I'm looking forward to even though I won't be a part of it next year I'm looking forward to a lot of soul searching by this board especially in relation to this work about where uh you all actually see the direction of this District being under your leadership and uh it should be a really eventful summer in will be attending PSU though so welcome you run but can't hide thanks make he'd make a great intern he already knows all about it looks to me like you've laid out three different potential timelines or time frames for us getting our work done and I'm curious if this is going to be part of a summer Retreat discussion that we kind of delve into that two of them would have us voting and making changes by SE setember 2015 one would be uh voting and make changes by uh September 2016 and I think uh given what you're describing in terms of the level of community support or understanding or trust um I mean my immediate reaction is that we need more time to do listening sessions and talking with our community and a variety of things um but it sounds like we're going to have another opportunity to delve into the timing and where we're at on that um so there was one um thing that you didn't talk about which I read in here with great um excitement which was um you talked about Denver and the fact that in Denver the enrollment in Denver is just skyrocketing for a variety of reasons but it was the one um District where you mentioned that part of the reason for the skyrocketing enrollment is that they've increased their graduation rates yes isn't that interesting it was awesome I I think in Denver they have something like 2,000 more students that they attribute speciically to the increase in the in the high school completion rate right and you know that's another happy circumstance that you would want to strive for but that could further complicate districtwide boundary review because of more people in catchman areas but right yes and I just don't know that we've really looked at that as being a a factor but that would be a really happy um circumstance to have to deal with so anyway thank you others okay so I just I have a couple more
02h 35m 00s
questions one um you highlighted um how different our population in the sense of just in terms of numbers we have more students than was projected 5 years ago um I think you said the number was 3,000 I don't remember off the top of my head um and I've often heard and I know this isn't under your purview or in your shop so I'm going to tell you what I hear from the community is that psu's enrollment projections are really challenging that um they don't give us the data that we need um you highlighted a little bit about um the different demographic that's moving into the city having students later but as we talk about this we know the future change is constant um do you have any thoughts about how we plan with that demographic in mind um but really not knowing um how many students uh two we do make in the report the disclaimer that though the uh population Research Center is part of PSU as well we're not formally Associated just to be clear but in defense of of work that um U that that we know there's controversy about but the change that is at the heart of this demographic change is something that is happening in many other communities Seattle is a great example and the same thing has kind of happened where demographers have have missed this the rapidity and scope of this ch so to give you an example in 1990 just 30% of the births within Portland were to women 30 and older by 2009 uh generation later it was more than 54% wow and a near doubling in the decision to have children later when you're more settled in a community and thus not leave and the like really was and there was a wakeup call in 2009 actually and maybe the recession might have had something to do with it but you had I think 300 more kindergarten students show up and you had 300 fewer bursts and so what's happening so one of the things we talk about in the report about information is that if you're forced to rely solely on quantitative information you got to get more and more sophisticated about it and I think the tools are better and and I know PRC is working more with Portland Bureau of sustainability looking at building permit issues how to apartment patterns change but also qualitative information having a better capacity in a district that has 48,000 students 5,000 employees probably a 100,000 plus parents and and and and custodial uh people in kids' lives to really monitor the qualitative assessments of people who are making decisions keeping their kids in school deciding to go there transferring for what reasons um uh an organization of your size complexity and and import ought to do more uh uh than just rely on the quantitative data and I think that's going to help you a lot to see those early warning devices the other thing that the value and and information in in digestible chunks in Denver's another plac to to to look to for some of that is giving communities a chance to understand these Dynamics over maybe a five or 10 year period of time the core ones how people are choosing other programs rather than the neighborhood school um uh looking at assessments of of how schools are doing and I know that's tricky but to give them the ability then to see those Trends over time clearly and simply and then organize to try to do something about it uh maybe go door too literally and and talk to people who whose kids are getting ready to go to school so so those are some thoughts about how to keep a better kind of bead on this and not be surprised uh because demographics can change as quickly in the opposite direction as they have in in in one and and and demographers though there's a lot of power in that are are limited um unfortunately by just some of the available data just to follow up too I think um the the point that director Morton made a few minutes ago about adap ability creating a community culture of adaptability knowing that demographic changes can can happen rapidly and even if you even if you have a good prediction districtwide in a on a cluster by cluster basis things change and whether it's housing patterns or building or whatever and so if the if the community has an A A an expectation that boundaries are going to change that really makes a big difference in um and what kind of tools are available to you all in making those decisions over time right great I was going to say Beverly clear which is one of the most active issues before the the school district now the main
02h 40m 00s
reason of the increase over six years ago is a far higher percentage of people living within the neighborhood have decided to stay within the neighborhood it's gone from about 45% we exiting to other programs now it's down to about 25% and in that is that real pressure on enrollment the irony there is that there are still over 240 students living within Beverly clear's neighborhood School catchman area who next fall could in theory say well I think we'll stay so those are some of the things at the at the school level to also be very very mindful of and and every situation Community has has uh differences that was a good segue and I think you just gave Miss gist a heart attack take 241 um but I just I wanted to express appreciation for talk about qualitative measures um and it was just another place where I saw and again you highlighted here about the the capacity of staff to even pay attention to this um that it was just clear we don't have the capacity you see the same people involved in many different areas and again it's a central resource piece of course we should be outdoing surveys and we prioritized obviously um pushing services to classrooms that we don't have this big organization just figuring out how does our community feel about us why are they moving why are they doing this but through the enrollment processes I've heard interest in US developing that piece about why do people make the choice to move why do people make the choice so I appreciated you highlighting that um and the last thing I want to say that again struck me with the jua position both I heard in you and I heard in sackett's report this this belief this higher um priority of strength of the system trumps the individual and what I'm struck by that is right you were here for the I'm not sure if you were here for the public testimony that began about um we have a middle school that's making a schedule change and it said how dare how dare you change us to to systematize um and so I'm just struck by that natural tension um that that exists is how do we keep the whole of the system strong because it's important because it does affect every individual at the same time and we also heard our P president say but Portland is unique we are different that's what we pride ourselves are so um to your point about how do we educate our community and how do we engage to know what that looks like and what are the issues that those both present again I just really appreciate you highlighting thanks thank you very much I'm just have a couple of comments I know I'm always last and everybody gets up as soon as I say thank you so um um you know I think a lot of people have been focusing on stakeholder and Community engagement but I really am more interested at the get-go here on the organizational capacity and Readiness point and I would Echo um Greg's comments about uh whether our internal capacity whether we really have that given the tremendous cuts that we've gone through at the administrative level here in this building um over the last seven years been huge and um I'm so one of my concerns is how do we build that capacity um and I would I just because not everybody has this report in front of them I would just um call out a couple of things here and one is building internal Clarity and Alignment among and between key PPS officials before embarking on this districtwide initiative I think that's something that's very important for us and then additional resources and clarifications of expectations and roles would build the internal capacity necessary I think both of those things are things that we want to be sure we're looking at and then um the other part or I guess maybe the beginning of all of this goes back to the same issues that we were talking about with sacket and that is really what are we looking for what is the most important piece what what is our policy around our schools is it um a neighborhood schools is the is the priority or is it educational Equity policy is that our um number one priority or is it a combination but I think we as a board with the help of our community need to make a firm stand about what that's going to be before we can move forward on any of this other um any of these other steps and then the other part um and this is a call out to my colleagues um there are two categories and are having to do with um us tying our strategies to policies and goals by creating board level policies policy guidance to staff as to which options to consider first I mean that that's what we need to do we don't have that policy and as a result um the next um piece in your says uh tie strategies and policies to goals by creating board level policy guidance to staff as to which options to cons consider first PPS now has an opportunity to clearly tie actions and strategies to districtwide goals and policy without clear policy
02h 45m 00s
principles and transparent decision-making PPS may make political decisions rather than goal oriented policy decisions for district W boundary review and I think that is a very big danger for us and why it's so important that we as a board make sure that we have those policies in place and why I'm looking forward to sackett's report and why I'm looking forward to working with all of you and then finally um on stakeholder and Community engagement the um timelines that you guys gave us um you know the longer period of time of course looks good but in in all of them I was missing what is the time frame you're looking at or what do you think is a reasonable amount of time that it will take us to do the organizational capacity and Readiness so that we can then move into the stakeholder engagement because most of your most of your chart has to do with stakeholder engagement and it doesn't doesn't uh talk about building our internal capacity in order to do that so I think the assumption is that by the time school starts next year and that they internal the internal alignment needs to be there and if it isn't that answers some of the questions about what you know what's feasible for the next school year so we need a report from sacket keep going you guys yeah Retreat to we have we have some of the summer work hopefully two board Retreats coming up this summer and uh and and then just continuing that work sounds like all of us will be busy this summer this is not a restful summer no this is important any other uh comments you guys coms here thank thank you for all your thank you so much for being here tonight thank you very [Applause] much okay we are just a little bit behind but not too bad uh so our next agenda item is a presentation by Our Community Education partners and on PPS discipline data there are actually two parts of the presentation first we'll hear from our Community Education Partners who I see many of you out in the audience um who will provide a report and recommendations and then we'll hear from our PPS staff on the goals to reduce exclusionary discipline superintendent Smith you have more to tell us actually um no I'm just going to turn it right over to community ation partners and say that we've got many partners in the room tonight here and a lot of people who've been engaged in this discussion and then I'll follow them with um some of what the district internal discussions have been and how we're going about trying to goal set collaboratively here in terms of setting realistic goals and targets hi hi I'm Gordon um and a member of C have been for seven years for most of that time on c i represented Juvenile Justice and my role with Juvenile Justice was to get the most at risk kids back into school um kids who are on probation um since I retired from Juvenile Justice I now volunteer at helensview High School uh as a mentor teacher some of you may know helensview is one of the schools that um that PPS contracts with through mesd and for many kids it's like the last chance well last Thursday I got to go to their graduation which was really exciting um 60 kids graduated and Margaret Carter delivered the keynote speech well I would say delivered she danced it mostly it was pretty incredible they were there were 800 people 800 people there for the graduation and the most inspiring um speeches from the kids I mean the obstacles but see those were the lucky kids cuz pretty much all those kids were pushed out of school in some way or another they found their way back somehow and they were managed to graduate so it was quite inspiring um in preparation for tonight's presentation cuz I don't have a lot going on in my life I watch the video of uh last April's board meeting you guys remember that April I think April 1st or something and uh with the this issue of exclusionary discipline was dealt with um directa Atkins you had a lot a lot of questions specifically that time I was here but then I also reminded myself here are some of the questions there were um what are we um when are we going to make this and by this I mean um exclusionary discipline and dispar is the priority and recognize the urgency are we holding principles accountable for their discipline data during their evaluations why aren't we seeing more movement than we are seeing and then there were expressions of frustration if if what we're doing isn't working shouldn't we use the resources in other ways and you expressed collectively that you were tired of hearing we're doing better and and concerns were raised about whether voluntary compliance on the part of principles was really enough unfortunately these questions are still
02h 50m 00s
relevant today the data indicates the disparities are still great uh but the time is right for Change and for leadership from you and from superintendent Smith in two meetings last month or the month right be month before uh you mentioned that uh uh School discipline and disparities were one of your three top priorities um one other one being high school graduation Rage which is so closely related to this issue um and that's the kind of leadership that we need to see C is here tonight to present you with an opportunity to initiate and embrace change there are two presenters here from c one on either side of me uh Christina albo on my right is from resolutions Northwest and she's going to describe C's involvement in Journey with PPS during the last seven years really on exclusionary discipline and Lessons Learned Sheila on my left is Sheila Warren is from Portland parents Union longtime member of c um for several years Sheila um has Sheila and PPU par pointland parents Union has uh been associated with a movement called the national dignity in schools movement which advocates for a moratorium on pushout it's a strong and admirable Mo model that requires planning and buyin from all stakeholders and I say all stakeholders C is following PPU lead in calling for a broad-based moratorium as a way to promote significant change so please listen closely to these presenters I know it's late we're you're an hour behind it's a long evening but listen closely because I'm sure you're aware that there's a National Ground swell now for this issue um Arne Duncan President Obama's uh chief of Education um and education Aunt lissy understand that at all times emotion at sometimes emotions may run High because for many people this is a very very personal issue with a lot of lot at stake think about how you as a school leader can actively ensure that PPS policies and practices give all children equal access to an education and finally imagine with me that in in the morning waking up and opening The Oregonian and instead of seeing articles that say Oregon is fourth from the bottom in graduation rates or fifth from the bottom with absenteeism that we can up up the paper and say Portland Public Schools declares an end to unnecessary and unfair School pushup thank you thank you thank you very much for your time tonight my name is Christina albo as Kathy mentioned and I work with resolutions Northwest which is one of the Community Partners um and Community Education partners and I'm going to share with you a little bit of what our journey has been with uh PPS in the last seven years and try to manage this at the same time Community Education Partners is a broad-based coalition of organizations that works as a catalyst to CH change the educational system and stands United to ensure the personal success and academic achievement of all children the primary work of our the focus of our work since 2006 has been to end the disparities in the treatment of people of color in Portland Public Schools for nearly 10 years we have been advocating for an end to the disparities in discipline and sadly the disparities remain it was urgent in 2006 and it's even more urgent today exclusionary discipline is a key measurable part of dis of disperate treatment of children of color in our public schools these disparities hurt students kicked out of school even temporarily suffer both in academic achievement and overall well-being C originally asked PPS to prioritize reducing discipline disparities through number one writing a district-wide policy that publicly calls for a reduction in disparities in discipline actions creating a specific specific reduction targets and timelines identifying Target schools and implementing best practices and prioritizing and developing alternative practices to suspensions and expulsions and include importantly parents Guardians families and youth in that process we wanted to share with you uh from our P perspective what progress has been made with regards to C's asks PBS did indeed adopt a policy which acknowledges acknowledge as one that disproportionate discipline practices exist in PPS and impact youth of color and families of color in that system and
02h 55m 00s
that there is a clear connection between exclusionary discipline and academic success PPS also adopted the relative rate index which common is commonly referred to as the rri to more accurately capture this data PPS identified a set of schools with high disparity rates and connected C to to those schools and PPS has supported incorporating alternatives to exclusion exclusion such as PBIS and restorative justice so what have we learned over the past six years given these um efforts to address our asks what we learned is that the guide to policies rules and procedures on student responsibilities rights and discipline does not reflect the spirit of the board policies and administrative directives and therefore building practices have remained largely exclusionary School Improvement plans are not an effective leather lever for setting targets and timelines around creating change in discipline practice families and youth most impacted by disparities in discipline are not included in decision-making or solution seeking practices and increased communication with PPS policy makers and transparent transparent data are pivotal to ensuring productive steps towards actual change in school discipline processes and we have seen that data and transparency sort of e and flow and it has not been largely distributed to the community what else did we learn a year and a half into our two-year pilot project with the specific schools identified C worked with the district to distribute a survey of teachers views on discipline practices and changes in their schools three schools responded two findings in particular stood out in these three schools chosen because of their racial disparities in exclusionary data the hard numbers less than half of the teachers thought that students of colors are excluded at a different rate from White students furthermore teachers varied widely in their awareness that the school was even participating in a pilot project to reduce those very disparities in discipline in one school four out of five teachers knew whereas in another school only a third of the teachers knew so we're here today with some new specific asks given that despite the efforts those disparities and disciplines remain staggering so the first one is to make disproportionate discipline practices an urgent and top District priority now is the time communicate this with schools and schools communities to invite their participation in addressing the issue developed strategies to address disproportionate discipline with benchmarks an accountability plan and scheduled consistent times to report to the board and the community on how strategies are working or not working include families and youth directly affected by disproportionate discipline in the development of best practices decision-making processes and Collective monitoring of Effectiveness and increase resources to allocate allocated to address disproportionate discipline and Implement effective practices it's also important and we ask that PPS support Portland parent unions recommendations for for reducing School exclusions the initiative that Kathy spoke to earlier is really around um involving community and family engagement process which culminates in a collective proposal to spe and specific recommendations around potential a potential moratorium of exclusions in PPS district and Sheila will talk about that um in further detail in a minute we recommend to revise discipline handbooks and practices and policies the ones that get down to the building level um part of that uh we recommend to establish that subjectively defined behaviors like insubordination or disrespect for Authority are not grounds for suspension or expulsion considering what we know by the data is that that disproportionately impct acts kids of color remove criminal justice language from disciplined handbooks in other words don't criminalize child behavior assault and battery is not what a second grade child [Applause] does possibly separate a handbook for prek to five to grade five and grade 6 to 12 so that it's very clear and specific that we are talking about different developmental stages in childhood and include Community with a
03h 00m 00s
focus on Family Youth and parents to review uh the revised discipline handbook before the final publication we also think that it's Paramount to support teachers and administrators with alternative practices provide resources to support teachers um and administrators with Alternatives education such as Intercultural competency and restorative justice time and skills necessary to support students staying connected to schools and staying in their classrooms create incentives and accountability measures for teachers and administrators to implement new practices and involve and listen to impacted families and youth as you are developing those Alternatives and lastly uh we think it's Paramount to have regular communication between Community Partners including C but not only C and PPS policy makers clearly and transparently communicate these Str strategies and accountability plans to parents students and other community stakeholders directly affected by them provide timely discipline data consistent clear and communicated to school administrators families and the wider community and re review the above items with C in quarterly meetings are our asks again it is the District's responsibility to your Youth and families to make disproportionate and exclusionary discipline practices an urgent and top priority okay um we do want to express an appreciation that we are grateful uh to the schools who allowed us to sit at their tables and work with them and we also appreciate the district's support and creating those relationship however again the data does not reflect adequate movement and the stakes are too high for further delay while overall exclusions have dropped discipline disparities have not changed significantly in fact in some cases I've used seen the data they've increased particularly for African-Americans for too many Youth and families especially those of color bad decisions are being made which negatively impact them not only that day not only at that time but for years to come and it's the district responsibility to Youth and families to make it an urgent and top priority and now Sheila is going to follow up with you in more detail just need to do you want me to log out to L in are you going to be able to provide us with that um it's not a PowerPoint I know it's called a pre is that right noee AE sure that'd be great thank you I have a prei too okay can we have a copy of yours too who do you want me to give this give it to are we going to make sure that your password isn't projected to all of our viewing public I don't know if it's hidden or not but I don't no it's it's not hidden cover your close your eyes everyone everybody their eyes hang K just hold on just a second he's coming down to help you thank you for that this is new new technology for me you can go you you can go ahead it's turned off the system I got C too I think that's us then I might miss the beginning of your I'm used to a mouse okay all right here I
03h 05m 00s
go can you see that all right that's in white okay take glasses off um I just wanted to thank you the board and good evening PPU where am I PPU feels like we have started new relationships with the board I think last time I think I was pretty angry and upset and um so I'm in a different place so thank you board thank you for coming to our PPU trust Circle we invited you when you came the trust circle is an intentional way of bringing folks together to start building relationship with those that need your support the most this is the beginning of those um where that my little thing is in the play in the way for the let me let me go I'm trying to get back out coming out me I'm trying to you trying to get this out yeah just this is the beginning of those critical decisions we must make together we must be about including all stakeholders okay Portland parent Union introduced a call for a moratorium in January 2014 The Campaign is called Solutions not suspensions by dignity and schools the dignity and schools campaign challenges the systemic problem of pushout in our nation's schools and advocates for the human right of every child to a quality education and to be treated with dignity the DSC unites parents youth Educators and advocates in a campaign to promote local and National alternatives to a culture of Zero Tolerance punishment and removal PPU has been a member since Inception in 2009 what is Solutions not suspensions I forgot to say the name of the campaign is Solutions not suspensions maybe I did say that Solutions not suspensions is a call for a moratorium on out of school suspensions and for schools to adopt more constructive disciplinary policies that benefit benefit students classrooms and Community to implement this moratorium a Grassroots initiative of students Educators parents and Community leaders is calling on States and districts to support teachers and schools in dealing with discipline in positive ways keeping most students in the classroom and helping Educators work with students and parents to create safe and engaging classrooms that protect the human rights to education and dignity here is our data this is our data let's see if I can go back oops I didn't lost my way okay go back all right I wanted to you guys to see this this is our data this is our pushout chorus this is data with the soul this is families who have been impacted and have told their stories over and some of you might have heard those stories but we call it a pushout chorus and so we have families telling the stories and a couple this young lady with the microphone is talking about her kindergarten child the other young lady is talking about her kindergarten child who was labeled um with battery the child was labeled with battery so let me go go on I thought I was getting good at this but Christina I need to go next one okay okay a model code is what we came up with the dign and schools campaign folks the dign and schools campaign model code on education and dignity presents a set of recommendation policies to schools districts and legislators to help in school pushout and protect the human rights to education dignity participation and freedom from dis discrimination the code is the culmination I've said that word a million times today and and I knew I was going to trip up on it the code is is the culmination of several years of research and dialogue with students parents Educators Advocates and researchers who came together to Envision a school system that supports all children and young people in reaching their full potential the model code is organized into five chapters education participation dignity dignity freedom from from discrimination and
03h 10m 00s
data monitoring and accountability each each here we go getting ahead of myself I think this one want to back up yeah I want to back up each of these chapters addresses a key component of providing the quality education that reflects core human rights principles and and values this is what the model code looks like you have a copy okay now we're getting down to the nitty-gritty PP U's approach to moratorium recommendation ation is to use an inclusive process inviting all stakeholders to the table and that means all stakeholders this is the trust Circle and some of you have already participated in that and um so the trust circle is this means PPU restorative listening dialogue this encourages people to seek ways of moving beyond differences in a good way to build better relationships it is not that all circles draw out Only the Good in people but circles do profoundly encourage and enable people to take the high road to share with others in a good way thus more emphasis must be given to improving the game not winning the game and solving problems not head-to-head but side by side circles create the spaces for disagreement without being disagreeable circles start with listening to most impacted families and students that's how PPA PPU does it principes and teachers support staff being open to telling their own stories decision makers and policy makers listening and acting not reacting gathering with listening to the most impacted along with principls teachers and support staff and Community relationships building in inally I hope that's making sense all orgs Community working on disciplined stuff directly or indirectly knowing that they have not been impacted but play a key role in supporting this is a trust Circle we must establish trust among us to be able to make inclusive decisions how will that look it will take a whole village this approach is an excellent chance to practice inclusion by building community and relationships cp's work has been the Catalyst for change it was the actions of C that ignited awareness of a pushout problem talk win stated this stated this could be very well be the most important civil rights issue of the 21st century the director of PPU has been a member of C uh representing cpps later Acorn and finally PPU since 2005 the Portland parent Union was born of the desire to give parents representation in a collective voice equal with that with what teachers have we are a centralized group of parents and families connected to resources and supports necessary to be powerful with advocates for our children and for each other and ultimately for positive institutional changes in the greater common good and I thank you guys for listening and um we're about um loving Folks up that's what we're about we need to change the Paradigm Shift needs to be changed and we need to start have sitting down and having those [Applause] conversations you want to do questions now or you want to have both um you want you want questions or you want us ask ask questions great yeah okay members no questions Andrew Greg mine isn't really a question I just want to say how much I appreciate I know that this has been um six years is a long time every one of these numbers is a student um and a family and as you pointed out it's it's not about just affecting their day or their week um it can affect them their entire lives so I just wanted to thank you and actually a personal shout out I I don't know the other two folks so I apologize I don't mean to not sing your Praises cuz I'm sure you're wonderful um but Sheila um you have just been um steady in this work and when you talk
03h 15m 00s
about loving people up um you really are changing you do change the way you interact and PPU interacts is about changing the way that we do this that it's not head-to-head when I think about the trust circles and the safety that's created it's really about creating the space to hear people's stories um because those stories are powerful and they they compel us to move so thank you all for um for being here and for continuing this work with us and to continuing to engage us even though I'm sure that it's been frustrating um because this is a really serious issue thank you thank you so um Echo everything that Greg just said um thank you so much to Sheila to everybody and c and all the all the folks and organizations who have been working on this for so many years or even decades um with this District um really appreciated all so again I'm um in addition to sort of sending us the The Groovy PowerPoint if you could also send it like an in writing like the list I really want to make sure that we have the list of the ask and then that we and knowing that the superintendent has has made this one of her top priorities I'm hoping speaking for myself that that will become one of our top priorities for the coming year we have our Retreat this summer I'm sure I won't be alone in that but um that we need to again carve out the time the summer to really um get clear about that and to map out what that'll be with staff so again I know I'm not alone in that just want to say that though for myself and um mapping against the the C ask the the the entire list so um and so that then we can move forward into the coming year with a specific kind of plan and road map for what we're going to do I mean I think we did um with the help of c and others um develop a pretty good policy back and I believe it was 2007 2008 um but it's time for an update of refresh and except acceleration and expansion of that um to the extent of whether it can get into our milestones and be something that we measure the reduction um certainly for me and we haven't not to jump the gun on the staff's presentation but the disaggregation in Focus particularly on the prek 2 um hugely important and for me at least at the very least that's where the moratorium needs to begin um that that change needs to happen um also just appreciate the level of you know things like changing the Lang which in our handbooks um that um again with the the capacity of staff I know the willingness is there but whe what we can do in terms of our guidance and also budget making decisions to find the resources to be able to make changes like that as well as um obviously the expansion of restorative justice and I know you've already begun that we've begun that in this budget but to get more of a focus on that and to to accelerate that and then finally of course teachers being huge key piece of this um the folks that the teachers that that are doing wonderful work and how can we share and expand those best practices the teachers who uh frankly are part of the problem and need more support or more accountability to change their practice and I know um we need to be able to again get the resources to both to celbrate and expand the great work that many teachers are doing and also have um supports and accountability for those that need to change so um that's just a real quick um perspective on an appreciation for what you're doing and just sort of a um statement that again I know I'm not the only one but just want to make sure that I stated personally that this is a priority for me and um while the past year has had many accomplishments and uh We've focused on many important issues this was one that unfortunately I think did not get as much attention so that needs to change in the coming year and I think the way you framed all this and the information and um just just that that you're you're here at the table and the way that you are I think is absolutely perfect and sets us um up for success and for change in the district so I so deeply appreciate that rights um thank you so much for your presentation I really uh I have several comments I really appreciate it I think it's uh one of the things that we have to keep clear in this is that uh this data this information that that particularly around discipline doesn't exist within a vac vacuum uh we're also seeing uh these same students disproportionately affected in other areas um IEPs I um I you know I and and that the list goes on um so there's it's it's hard not to notice the systemic issue um that we have particularly um as we serve uh some of our most vulnerable and some of our most diverse students so uh I really appreciate the Highlight to this and I think it's a part of a it's a it's an important part of a larger conversation that we need to have as a
03h 20m 00s
system a couple of things that that I wanted to um I wanted to mention that just reiterate things that were were talked about in the presentation one was around uh accountability and I think this is comes down to building leadership I think it comes down to uh the leadership we have in front of each uh classroom and the other staff within that building and where uh how that staff works together and that staff um that staff creates in a culture and environment within their school um we can do what we can on a policy level and we absolutely are obligated to do that uh but again just like everything else it comes down to how that policy translates into um into practice and I think that the early on in the presentation when you're describing desing the the results and where the policy you know the the racial educational equities policy things being called out specifically um how maybe there has been a little of an impact um not nearly where we need it to be uh a couple of other words that were really well first before I say that one I I think it I think we talk about the role of the uh trust Circle in this process and I'm not familiar uh with the trust Circle specifically um but I'm definitely familiar with the concept and this is not without a precedent uh Mol county for example is working with community and developing uh visions of how it in their work visions of how Health Service can be delivered across underserved communities and it's really created an opportunity for that Community to inform the practice uh not the other way around so I think this is similar to what you're describing in uh the community really creates a a has that voice and uh has that seat at the table to inform what's happening um on this particular topic but certainly I think there's a value um to it in other topics as well the last thing I'll mention is a word that is for me uh really I think emotionally charged and that's the word dignity uh and you used it in in terms of the model code and I and I think that is so closely tied to uh the morale of our students the morale of our parents their the relationship of our students to our educational system and their parents to our educational system without dignity in um and the freedom to to feel as though they can enter an environment in a dignified way uh we don't have any chance of achieving all of the things that we say we want to achieve so I appreciate that particular call out um and it's one that uh that again can be identified in so many other systems related to our schools but but in this particular case uh there's a harm that's done when dignity is removed and uh and we should really be fighting like hell to keep that keep that and those other those other um uh words and phrases and and messages that you had in there in that that process but that particularly touched me so thank you for for including that I just like to Echo the comments that have already been made I think this is a really obvious issue for me I mean as a student I see it all the time and it's something that I think we definitely need to address but I mean everyone has commented on what a complex issue it is I mean director Morton mentioned that I mean even if we put it in policy the implementation isn't necessarily there and I think it's something that we as a board need to look at really carefully is how can we set up a system not just based in policy but a true systematic approach to how we can address this because I think it reflects itself in every aspect of our work and if we really want to see graduation rates improve this is one of the biggest areas that we can make improvements so others El thank you very much for both of you being here I really do appreciate your comments as well um and especially having the a list of asks that's always helpful as a board to to hear from the community or from you exactly what it is you think we need to do um it's not always that people come with uh asks they we hear about issues but never about what you think we could actually do to make a difference I really do appreciate having that that as well so thank you so
03h 25m 00s
[Applause] much welome is that the PowerPoint yeah maybe we can just get Karen to make copies or PDF it and send it to us or something like that yeah okay so now we have staff is that you're in charge okay okay so part two of this presentation will be Sarah singer who is assistant to the chief academic officer and Tammy Jackson who is director of student services and Melissa gof who is the executive director of teaching and learning um and and I'm going to just say that much of the the presentation that we just saw which was awesome with the prees by the way like we've been doing collaborative meetings here with C with Portland um parent Union um and with staff as we're grappling with how are we doing something that we're really maximizing the opportunity of the partnership and how what the work is that's going on inside the district uh and so we will actually um and part so part of what we want to do is number one talk to you about the goals that we're working to set and as you heard Kathy Gordon um mention that um reducing exclusionary discipline is one of the three goals that I'm setting as a top priority for the district for the next three years so what we've set is number one um working to get 100% of our students reading at Benchmark by the time they leave third grade as the first one second one to reduce exclusionary discipline and we were looking at what is the specific Target but both reducing exclusionary discipline overall and reducing the disproportionality and exclusionary discipline and then the third one is continuing to accelerate um the increase in our graduation rate so those are the top three targets um the discussion we've been in with C about how do we set a Target that is like a meaningful Target and then align what we're doing to actually make it happen um we're looking at a 50% reduction in overall exclusionary discipline and a 50% reduction in disproportionality in exclusionary discipline over two-year period and this is what I mean again we're working on is this the thing that makes sense um looking at year one having a 50% 5050 reduction in 10 to 20 Target schools so really trying to say here are schools where we know this is a significant issue and let's go deep and really make it happen there first and then by year two doing it districtwide um so that those that's the Target that we're looking at the second part of our conversation has been about the Portland parot Union um call for a moratorium and our discussion here has really been how does a moratorium make sense inside the district and how does it contribute to to reaching the goals so would we look at early grades would we look at um students younger than 12 where we do we we are saying we won't ex do exclusionary discipline practice for students younger than 12 um so there have been a couple different ways that we're doing would you look just at subjective practices across full K through 12 and that's one that a number of districts across the country have been doing and have had significant impact where you you are working on what are other supports and strategies um for looking at behavioral change besides exclusionary discipline so that's the conversation that we're in and part of what we wanted to do tonight is really take you through here is our data snapshot over the period of time we've been talking about um and then what are practices that are working um that we're looking at replicating and what are some of the partnership strategies that have been working so Sarah Tammy and Melissa thank you great so I'm going to start by providing a snapshot or an overview of what some of our data tells us and just uh um before I start a few things to note um we have um recently formed a cross functional data team to more fully support um this as um a district priority um and the intent of that group is to really think about how can we improve our data um reporting how the data looks but also and perhaps most critically um processes that support the accountability um of of um using this data to make an impact the other point I want to make is the data that I'm going to show you on the next several slides are fiveyear Trend data so that's exciting that we can go back five years and really see how we've done over time um you in what I'm presenting right now the data stops at 20121 13 in your data in your packets you received more up-to-date data the reason why we're stopping at 1213 in
03h 30m 00s
this presentation is that the the current year data is not um fully verified for accuracy and if you're going to compare from year to year you want to make sure that you're comparing Apples to Apples so I'm going to start with um some positive uh trending which is if you look at the percent of students who've been excluded um at least once over a 5-year period we do see a decline from 2007 at 7.1% down to 4.7% however the red line that I just presented there is our um our rate for our black students um which has declined over time but you will note that there is quite a difference between our white and our black student population when it comes to um who's experiencing disciplined um incidents and it's about five times the rate so this this particular slides going to show um percentage of students excluded at least once by school level um we start with 2007 you'll see middle middle schools um experienced um the most and as we proceed um over time you'll notice a few things one um we do see again across all levels uh trending um in the positive direction um you will also see that in 2012 13 that our middle schools um continue to experience our middle school students and that's grade 6 through 8 um continue to experience the greatest number of um percentage of incidents so Sarah clarifying y question when you're saying elementary schools you're including k8s in that yeah so there this data does include um and so in that sense elementary schools are probably inflated the elementary schools includes Elementary plus the k8s but when we've taken a look at just the six the grades sixth seventh and eth those grades in our case we find a similar pattern so the data overall is telling us is that the Middle grades are um uh the place where we find our students um being affected by discipline the most is there a difference um between the six seven and eight that's in an elementary school and the middle schools is there a difference there not much not much not much change the pattern the pattern is true it kind of follows a bell and historically has followed a bell and you see that changing shape if you were to break it down by individual grades regardless of the middle school or prek configuration prek I was just curious if the students in the k8s were seeing a lower level of discipline at the middle school level than the kids who are in a middle school that's what I was looking for the white percentage is a little lower in sixth through e8th grade at Cades than Middle School however the level of exclusion for is very simp great thank you okay I forgot to do the the 2012 13 bar so it's even lower okay so the next slide shows the number of discipline incidents for disruptive behavior and before I show you the data on this it's uh critical understand two things about this one um this was some analysis done by the um all hands collaborative eliminating disparities um and secondly they use disruptive behavior which really includes a number of things disorderly conduct General harassment insubordination violation of school rules in other words these are the offenses that one might consider more subjective um more up to the individual interpretation of an adult less maybe concrete like other other incidents like um fighting so these are again the more the more subjective ones which is something that um nationally uh is being looked at as a key as a key place to Target so this is in uh Again by Elementary School um what you see here is is uh we is is Park R is actually not even showing up here and they don't they have very few if if any um incidents and what I have learned is that they have implemented a restored Justice um program so in all their elementary schools what was that in all of their elementary schools you're
03h 35m 00s
saying I don't know Park R Elementary no actually no we haven't done any specific work at the elementary level so doing something else okay thanks okay thank you I miss they're representing it as RJ so just to say that's how they're talking about it yeah yeah so we learned that from them but we can do more more uh okay fact gathering on that one and so what you're going to see here is um at our high school level we are outperforming our um our other um local districts and um and doing relatively okay in comparison on Middle grades but we all this I think this slide shows that we all need Improvement across the entire region that this is this is a a major um Regional issue so the way to read this is um this is our again this is our PPS rate of discipline percentage of students excluded the key here is um there's a couple of key points to note one is as we know our black students are most um experience the most rate of um discipline but our native students also experience um a great deal of um disciplinary incidents and this slide also um breaks down again that Disobedience and disruptive behavior one might consider a more subjective offense it's looking it's breaking down the rates um in that way so that for for example for the black population 2.5% of the students who experienced um an exclusionary incident um they were only uh it was it was a Disobedience and disruptive behavior incident only um average loss number of lost instructional days per student by race so again this is I think the key Point here is it's it's um it's largely uh disproportionate it is this is an average so keep in mind for many students it's significantly higher than than a day this is just a range um and we also know that attendance and how instructional time is a key is a key factor in graduation rates so Sarah just to clarify that's the average number of lost instructional days per student by race based on suspension and expulsion days correct and so this uh particular slide um is again looking at um days excluded it's looking at total days excluded for for our prek to second grade population so this is our four to eighty olds and um what this is going to show is while this this this graph shows something that's very interesting and that we have um somebody in our in our previous um presentations we heard about the criminalization of some of these terms so battery is actually a very common offense that our 4 to 8year olds um are being labeled with um this slide I just want to point out this slide does not do a great job of of expressing the disproportionality so white students there's five times more white students than black students so just understand that when you look at this yes white students experience the greatest number but it's nowhere close to the greatest percentage can I ask a question about the the top purple it's labeled as other can you give me an example of what types of discipline issues those would be me see is that the weapons and the drugs substance abuse for kids let's see um there's there's forgery extortion um there's some they're random there's a whole it comes up on another slide right theft Yeah okay or harassment might be in there so I'm sorry Tammy you said or harassment harassment is broken out different than threat intimidation it it would I think harassment would be a separate category is that right and I would so so that would be in the other in this in this slide which is a little different than what you saw in some of the others right and the other thing in your packets I think there's a really crazy detailed chart that will that will break out all of these crazy good yeah thanks Sean Helm for that um I mean crazy helpful it's not
03h 40m 00s
good I got a question um and it actually is from about the previous slide do you mind backing up I was going to wait till the end but Greg stopped you so I figured I would go ahead and jump on um so average number of I'm a little confused by this average number of lost instructional days per student does this include all of the students that have not had any sort of Behavioral issues so this isn't just maybe the a better number would be average number of lost instructional days per student who have been experienced um behavior that might give me a better idea I agree with that we'll take a look at how we present this yeah because that may be a little deceiving yeah I think the key Point here is that I mean the disproportionality is is readily apparent which addresses access issues okay so the data team created some key findings there as follows exclusionary incidents have been decreasing since 2007 especially at the high school level African-American students followed by native students experience the greatest percentage of exclusionary incidents exclusionary incidents um have been decreasing for African-American students since 20 7 however and this is a huge however the relative rate of exclusionary incidents between African-American and white students has not improved over time and Middle grades is where PPS students experience the greatest number of exclusionary incidents and the next steps for um data analysis and Reporting is we are going to um conduct analysis on discipline to identify some of our uh better performing higher performing schools as it relates to to discipline and then lowest performing schools using an index of various um measurements um we're going to work with our exclusionary discipline committee to determine criteria for identifying who will be our Target schools that align with the goals that the superintendent Smith outlined and then we're looking at developing standard reporting formats in reporting intervals because we believe that will um be a key to accountability okay so I get to talk to you a little bit about what's working in terms of our high leverage strategies in your packets you received a slightly longer list than the items I'm going to talk about here um tonight but the first uh strategy that we're going to address is culturally responsive PBIS and culturally responsive PBIS next slide is um uh a framework if you will an organizing framework uh that engages that we use to look at a multi-tiered system of support that engages students family and staff um in aligning resources and supports in a positive way for students it fundamentally sits on the following beliefs that students need to know what's expected of them that they need to be directly taught the behaviors that are expected the positive behaviors and that behavior needs to be positive behavior needs to be um supported and encouraged and acknowledged and that supports need to be provided to enable school Success so that it isn't uh a random luck of the draw if you will so does it work suree PBIS when I recently read the the material on our website yes they talk about learning labs as the as a critical huge critical part of PBIS do we have even one school that follows through with the learning Labs that's the huge critical part of PBIS so it a lab from the sense that we have strong implementers of PBIS that that for so when I talk about these high leverage strategies that we're using and we use this PBIS framework for our strategies we're looking for for a layering on of effective best practices and systems in order to demonstrate the kind of successful outcomes that we would want all of our schools to have so from that sense of the word yes we do have those schools but uh trying to be as polite as I can here it doesn't sound like there's a learning lab strategy that they talk about in PBIS which includes everybody in the school and the community all coming together surrounding and setting up systems that change the culture of the school do we have any schools that have all those Community people within their School attendance area coming together which school would that be that I could go
03h 45m 00s
look at um so we are just completing our school assessment data right now and so the schools that are participating and we identify on this slide as high implementers or low implementers these are School schols that participate in a schoolwide assessment process so they use um data to drive their decisions and to monitor their progress and about how well they're implementing this framework so that's what this slide represents and as the schools that have just now completed their assessment process I will list to you the strongest schools but that that's not the question that I'm asking well but I think it is I think I think what you're saying is who are the schools that are the strongest implementers that have the community coming together and the schoolwide consensus that they're doing the work for that's really not what I'm asking I'm asking if if there's a setup structure similar to the information that's put out in PBIS about the learning lab structure that means you've got you've almost dumped all the other committees in the school which is what PBS suggests that you do dumps everything out and the the community and the teachers the children and everybody comes together to work on the culture of the community and you pretty much dumped everything out so do we has anybody done that yes okay so I I won't say that they've dumped everything out but I will say bra together sure braided their work or are in the process of doing that and that would be Robert gray Markham Vernon vestel Whitman and woodmar those are our strong implementing schools for this Academic Year Vestal and woodmer did I miss one Robert gray Markham Vernon Vestal woodmar and Whitman yes and I would be very happy to arrange any time a conversation if you need that thank you for your help appreciate it so this slide that you're looking at right now looks at suspension and expulsion rates um and comparing these two levels of implementation so bear in mind all the schools that are participating in this work are in fact making um some strides towards implementation implementation of PBIS is thought to be a three to five year process so we have people earlier in this process than others so the higher implementers you'll see a uh a more sharp decline in the rate of exclusion in the next slide we begin to show you looking by Race So for white students you see a 3.4% decline in the rate of exclusion in the next slide you'll see for our black students you also see a decline not at the same rate but you do see a decline by race when that's sharper than for example a low implementer which in fact you see an uptick for this would suggest to us that they're getting some of their systems in place they're getting schoolwide rules and expectations but maybe they are not teaching those expectations in a culturally relevant and responsive way that's getting us the kind of gains that we would hope to get over time I was just sitting here looking at data also this is from last year's data I was looking at a little bit of the preliminary work on this year's data and where leadership is strongest we see even sharper declines um in the rate of the higher implementers just to make a note um restorative justice also another effective strategy is know that you have um helped us expand in the upcoming year it's a an alternative discipline uh practice that is emerging to assist with uh particularly addressing disproportionate rates of exclusionary practices it uh uses a variety of proactive processes that include restorative inquiry mediation conferencing dialogues Etc the kinds of things that you heard Christina and Sheila talk about a short time ago there are three fundamental underpinnings that include understanding the impact of a person's behavior and repairing the harm done engaging in community and family involvement and empowering all who are involved we have two schools currently implementing restorative justice and those are Rigler and Grant rigler's been implementing for the past three years and is moving now into a sustainabil track so we will be adjusting their level of support Grant is implementing for the past two years we are expanding next year to the schools you see listed
03h 50m 00s
below which are Oley green Chief Joe Madison Bowmont Boyce Elliot humbold and George centralized hearings is also another practice that or another shift that we've made this year so we've moved from a hearing an expulsion hearings process in schools that was done by School principles in their buildings to a centralized process where we have a Cadre of Administrators who um that go out to schools who are unknown to the schools up until the time of their hearing and as a result of that process as of the 20th of this month we had completed 161 hearings and 29 of those had resulted in expulsion this represents about I'm guessing it's going to be about a 50% reduction from expulsions from what we had a year ago um um yours not how do you decide who go who has a hearing and who doesn't that's so the process to a hearing is that the student has reportedly uh violated some some school rule uh it's the school's job to investigate and determine that they believe that it might meet an expellable uh level the requirement of a school in order to even go through expulsion hearing process is they must talk to their regional administrator or myself to gain approval to move to a hearing if there's some other uh support strategies or interventions that are readily seen by the either the regional administrator or myself by adding in more resources and supports we do so so they don't make it to a hearing if it's believed that that in fact the behavior reaches the magnitude that it it does need to go to a hearing sometimes that's by the level of infraction in and of itself that it absolutely is required to go to a hearing then they the school is granted permission to schedule that hearing and uh my office coordinates that process so what percentage of uh of what how do you figure out if you have if you have hearings that have to take place under the guidelines right so for example there portion of the of the total hearings would that be would you guess so Portland has very few Zero Tolerance rule policies so the federal and state requirements around weapons automatically would go to hearing so what for to make it how I listen to those conversations is to make sure that's what being what is being described to me fits the definition of a mandated exclusionary event so in the case of weapons in the case of some drug violations and alcohol violations in the case of um assault and battery of Staff which you've seen and we've talked a little so a certain number of those 161 are mandated must go to hearings by the state or and also our policy or by the state and not our policies or by very few of those are what I know about these hearings is that very few of these hearings are um either federal or state requirements although there are some of them in there and some of them are hearings required by our own policies that's correct what percentage of the hearings how do we decide if something goes to a hearing but it's not required that it goes to a hearing is that somebody Tak % I could I could well I mean how would we how would we decide that how would so let me make sure I understand your question so how would we decide whether or not something would go to a hearing it that's not mandated to go to a hearing because that's you've got some Flex in there obviously how do we deal with the flex that's what I'm interested in here's question so that's a great question um thank you um so either by the egregiousness of the behavior itself or by the the failed attempts at intervention and support basically somebody extremely short answer somebody's going to eyeball that somebody is going to listen to the story and say maybe takes a hearing this kid a hearing because I need more of the story so often what happens when I get those calls so just to make it about a story is when I get those calls I'm going to hear a very fine point in time
03h 55m 00s
I'm going to hear that somebody hit somebody say that that's what I hear I'm I have a whole lot of question about somebody hit somebody I want to know what happened right before that I want to know what happened before that I want a biger ger picture about what happened um what was the the anteed if you will or the thing that comes before the behavior that's going to help me know what options and opportunities exist in order to support that child Beyond something like an exclusionary practice okay if I can't get at all that information because it's not readily available at the time then I'm going to say we need to take this to a hearing because it feels egregious to me at that time so that the school has the opportunity to complete their investigation and that's why you see the distance between 161 hearings and 29 expulsions so what happens is that schools are doing a whole lot of work and bringing a bunch of information together that they present to the hearings officer at the time of the hearing that's not only about that incident in in and of itself but about the student and their their strengths and challenges and supports that they've received is that helpful thank you okay that's the last slide thank you very much questions from board members Bobby I was uh particularly interested in the fact that we seem to have so many instances at the middle school grades um as opposed to high school or Elementary and do we have any specific strategy for those particular grades for those kids or any uh explanations so one of the um things that we're seeing an incredibly strong interest in is restorative practices we've begun a little bit of professional development and I'm extremely excited to see more of that work um happen in the upcoming year uh that's something that's of real strong interest to particularly our middle schools we also see um promise in uh I mentioned Robert gray as one of our uh strong implementers of PBIS so that's another strategy so you see these strategies we're also um we we are also working on a project uh in Roosevelt cluster to make sure that we have culturally specific and culturally responsive um supports available to our students and families in Middle grades good thank you other questions Steve if we eliminated uh suspension Auto it's pretty much automatic suspension for fighting in our schools not necessarily but I mean we've got a tremendously large am we've got this little sheet here mhm it's got a lot of fighting stuff on it mutually agreed and aren't these suspensions numbers of suspensions for kids is that what this number of exclusions yes exclusions exclusion means suspension or expulsion so those are okay so there is quite a few for fighting yes if we'd eliminate suspensions for fighting like they used to do in the old days that it take care of what 20% of our exclusions maybe or more than that it's huge number it would and that's part of what and the second thing is uh the the second the second thing is we also have exclusions for absentees yes we do so if we eliminated all the exclusions for absentees I mean and you're absent kid and so we're sending you home tomorrow uh doesn't make a lot of sense of course but uh if we did that there'd be a big chunk of it would be so okay just something that I think would be nice to look at okay thank you oh my other question I'm sorry my other question is how how are as we're working on beginning to work on this I really in a way it's probably a question for the superintendent more than but I don't know uh how are we involving the Teachers Association and the the the union for the EA people in this work because you there's there's several parts to this work there is around it of course course and part of it is you have is coming up with alternative methods that keep children in classrooms as opposed to sending them home
04h 00m 00s
or whatever expelling them so and that would and and that that work comes really I mean the people who who deal with that really are the classroom teachers who have the most sense of how that works uh if two kids in my classroom when I was an old teacher got in a fight that didn't bother me so much but if one of them told me no that bothered me a lot because that affected my the classroom different than the fight the fight's done and over with and and so you go on with your class and but the kid telling you no creates this other atmosphere and so it would seem to me that we really need to have teachers heavily involved in this to I agree to get the balance yeah we agree and there's there are but different aspects of this that teachers need to be really involved in some of it is the looking at our policies and when we were just talking about our policy handbook doesn't line up with the actual I mean our student handbook doesn't line up with our policy so that disconnect there's a there's a bunch of work to be done there that we will do in collaboration with our teachers union um and and as you say like the ability to have different strategies and supports so if we're saying need Dev a broader set of respons do what do you do yeah exactly yes there's a there's a lot of work that will be and I I was on the

Event 2: Board of Education - Study Session - June 2, 2014 Part 2

00h 00m 00s
with the actual i mean our student handbook doesn't line up with our policy so that disconnect there's a there's a bunch of work to be done there that we will do in collaboration with our teachers union um and and as you say like the ability to have different strategies and supports so if we're saying you need to have a broader set of responses what do you do yeah exactly yes there's a there's a lot of work that will be and i was on the board when they wrote that book actually and i think it's been reported original it's been revised since then it's been right but it's not been revised that way but not recently yes not that much and the second thing is that they used to have before i was on the board i got them to stop doing corporal punishment in this city so and it sounds funny but i did oh i brought it up we never knew it brought it up a meeting and frank mcnamara said and i wasn't on the board i said you know we ought to get rid of this corporal punishment because all this shows it shows that it makes kids more violent and that evening at the meeting they eliminate the punishment so we sometimes good things can come out of quick yep so the other one i'll say is portland parents union is um sheila mentioned that they're going to she's facilitating a broad-based community conversation that um that we will be participating in and pat has also been invited to participate in as have other community partners that will be looking at like everybody at the same table how are we doing this so you got my memo on you got received my email on that and i've looked at that okay thank you any other comments or questions matt sure thank you um i think this to me uh the data particularly how uh we see uh we see a greater benefit for white students than we have for students of color really reminds me of how important our work in in talking about race and talking about identity and talking about privilege is in our schools and i think until you begin to incorporate that deeper into the work we're doing on a building by building basis you're going to continue to see any and i i want to say i the the multi multi-chaired approach there's more than one way to to do this i think is the right way to go but any of those solutions that are implemented are going to in a positive way disproportionately affect our white students than it is are our kids of color and that's because we haven't done the work in the schools that we've needed to do around race and around privilege so it's similar to my my commentary several weeks ago now on common core state standards where without standards or standards but without relevancy without cultural relevancy without a curriculum that is relevant you're not going to see see that make a difference in the students who have been struggling and historically struggling so my i'm encouraged by by the efforts but i also know we desperately need to continue the work that we're doing in our schools talking about race talking about privilege these are things that are impacting our kids daily in our schools and they're impacting our their families in the community so yeah and so i just wanted to say to that thank you um a couple things first of all thank you to the board members who have been noting that supports and strategies for our teachers our frontline folks are paramount to actually making this change happen so that includes actual strategies around student engagement and around classroom climate and around what is the impact of race on my relationship with the curriculum and with my students as well i think is extremely critical i think it's the precursor to the no in the classroom because what we're trying to do is impact things before the student says no so what are those things we can do to avoid as many no moments as possible and i just wanted to say that i've heard throughout the night folks uh both here at the dice and and and their your own in your own seats talk to the import of um the voices of our community and of our parents and i think uh one of the difficulties for me as a staff person and in working in pps is that often the voices that have the opportunity to be heard the most are are voices that don't represent the parents of color and the parents have been disenfranchised through these policies and practices which is practices that we have in place we've got policy that's strong but our practices aren't there and so recognizing that the parents who were here tonight to to
00h 05m 00s
simply stay here as late as possible to hear that this board was taking this seriously um that you are taking the import of their voices and their students stories to heart is extremely important to me as a staff member for the district and i really want to express my appreciation to you for that so thank you thank you very much uh greg did you have something yeah um let's piggyback a little bit on what director buell was saying about that um i was surprised at the data that crazy good worksheet that i um that lays out all the different pieces i know we didn't have it up there um and crazy good in that it really articulates or classifies each instance and what it was for i was struck because in as i looked at the data i believe that the message about zero tolerance policies has made it through to me right that they disproportionately affect certain populations but that's not our issue i mean that's part of the issue but really if we're looking at numbers to director buell's point there are a lot of things that we have subjective control over that that we can be we can be affecting immediately so i that's i really appreciated that data spreadsheet um the other piece um we again didn't get to see it up on the slide but you showed us some of these dashboards that we're using with with real live time a couple of things just um in the jefferson nat and the jefferson but in the madison and the um roosevelt cluster i noticed that the the columns for white weren't in the dashboard so just an fyi if that's what people are really using like if that's a screenshot they're not getting that data second of all i was struck as i was going through their the and we haven't talked about it here but the increase or the higher percentage of special ed students who are experiencing exclusionary discipline and we know that we're over identifying students of color in special ed so of course that's this double whammy um anyway i was just struck by that's that's a really s that's a really there are significant differences in numbers there as well so what the effect that that has is also when you're looking at that that more specific data sheet that you have and you're looking by school is that the schools that are going to stand out are also those schools that have self-contained behavioral classrooms that are over-represented by black students so on behalf of the principals who i know would want me to point that out you see that in their data as well but and there's some principles behind it here today and there's the compounding of that issue of course because as we isolate students in 2b classrooms we are excluding them from general education as well so it's a problem we're trying to address on multiple fronts other questions i just want to thank staff and the superintendent for the transparency and the clarity of this data as well as the sort of the the incredible depth of the backup data but just the way you um framed the issue so clearly and starkly in your powerpoint and your presentation here and that the clear action agenda and momentum behind it which um to my recollection is the this this the clearest and strongest that i've that i've seen in my years on the board so i'm just really filled with hope at this moment even as well as the the outrage and depression of the continued disparity but just feeling it feels different to me as well as hearing from our partners tonight so that's that's fantastic and particularly i want to just really appreciate how staff called out and kind of shine the spotlight in your your powerpoint and your your um just the data around the the four to eight-year-olds um and just really making that a stark um issue that again we need to be talking about if not if not other ranges and i appreciate it you're already looking at different possibilities but at the very least four to eight year olds um oh my god okay and then also the the the subjective piece as well that you called that out and um so just it's like the you're giving us a road map of where we could go and i i felt like in past years it's kind of been there's been a little bit of it with pbis but not as clearly right now in terms of both the tools that we can use and sort of the um very clear um policy and practice changes that need to happen around those two pieces in particular so just thank you so much and actually i'm going to speak just to because much of this conversation happened with our partners too like figuring out okay what what are how our partners think about this how are we thinking about this how does the moratorium apply what's realistic for us okay how is our how are we using i mean we did a lot of joint conversation as we were both figuring out um what's next that felt lined up right i mean i think all of us
00h 10m 00s
were pretty excited about just what feels lined up and what feels like we're in a good place i think to really accelerate what we making a difference so thank you for that as well i had scribbled that but i'm thinking i'm expressing appreciation to the partners too because this was really dialogue to end up trying to figure out okay what's actionable what's the you know how what's the data what data we want to look at what are the goals we want to set how can we apply in a moratorium in a way that makes sense for us i mean this has been a real back and forth so appreciation for that one of the things that it would be nice if we would look at is if you're really if if we're trying to create schools that are a good educational atmosphere for every child which is hopefully that's what we're trying to do and there is a that's a little bit different measurement than who is expelled or suspended or who who gets in trouble there's a slight different measurement and that particular aspect of this whole issue it rests a lot on how good the relationships are within that school so if we have these schools where there's no trust and respect from huge portions of the of the people working in the school it's hard to go out and expect them to have a really good school for all the children in the school and make sensible decisions that work and thus attack the specific problem we're talking about here tonight which is a disparity you you have to have if you have that good solid school that helps immensely on being able to attack and deal with this disparity problem so we need to be looking at that over in this corner maybe too so we're saying okay what is the deal here if you can't listen to your teachers and you can't and a teacher can't feel comfortable coming in and talking to you about what's taking place in the school in the classroom you're not going to make good decisions particularly within that school around decisions you're not going to have the trust which allows you to bring alternative types of working with children other than just get them out of here because you can't have the discussions and come to those conclusions and decisions very easily that you can't otherwise so i think we need to keep that in mind too that there's in this overall context too where we're really trying to go which in the end would have would solve this not that thing but i mean it would you're not going to solve it very well without that thank you i would say as we and as we do that i think we have to we have to make sure that we're not waiting to uh to address issues that are affecting children now um yeah particularly in in the case and i've heard you say this director beale bringing adult problems into uh into into life where we they become uh sort of obstacles to to serving children better so um and i know that's not what you're suggesting at all but i i definitely think that um that that needs to remain the focus and i would say there are probably schools where we think everything is is going just fine and those schools are still demonstrating to us that there's a disproportionate impact on kids of color who are who are being pulled out of class everything goes together so i want to thank the staff and our community partners and i i think this has been a really fantastic opportunity it's kind of the example of what i look for and i think about us meeting as a committee of the whole to have these study sessions i really appreciated all the information that you provided to us the opportunity for us to talk and hear each other's voices so thank you very much and i'm looking forward to as we know talking about this a little bit this summer and making sure that it's on our priority list so thank you thanks so much thank you okay we're getting there um the next thing on our agenda is franklin high school schematic design yahoo this is an exciting moment for the board after holding discussions on may 19th and may 27th and as we all know numerous dag meetings and all kinds of other meetings the board is now ready to vote on the franklin high school's comedic design uh carol you have any comments other than jim is here we know yeah i really don't jim and debbie are both here to answer questions you've done your discussions and you have a resolution that reflects your conversations at the last two meetings
00h 15m 00s
so um we really just are here to answer questions so let's go ahead and get the emotion on the table so we we're not we're not there yet hang on we'll now consider resolution 4922 approving the franklin high school schematic design the commitment of additional funds and initiating the design development phase of the work do i have a motion second director belial moves and director akin seconds the motion to adopt resolution 4922 ms houston is their citizen comment yes we have six speakers the first two edward wolf and joshua curtis i'm not sure if everybody was here when we uh did citizen comment i think the most important thing at this time of night is that citizen comment is three minutes in front of you you'll see a green light for the first two minutes the yellow light means you have one minute left and when the red light comes on and there's a buzzer we ask that you uh please wrap up your comments and thank you so much for being here we really are interested in your comments thank you very much tara knowles and members of the board and superintendent smith i'm ted wolfe wolf and i'm speaking tonight as a board member of our portland our schools last week as you'll recall i urged you to adopt the additional criteria suggesting that to modernize the structures of our high schools without optimizing their capacity to support a robust educational program would be a failure to deliver what portland voters asked of you tonight you'll vote on resolution 4922 to approve the schematic design for franklin and as you know the resolution would leave the additional criteria for now on the cutting room floor the resolution makes no definite commitment to approximately 25 million dollars that staff has estimated would be needed to address the student-centered criteria in the high school designs this is a de facto judgment that these student-centered criteria are quote nice to have but not something we quote need to have by adopting the resolution as drafted you risk acting on behalf of portland voters buying three high schools undersized for their educational mission from day one i found that outcome troubling last week and i still find it troubling tonight last week you rejected an option to reprogram 25 million dollars from the summer improvement projects to the high school projects and i understand why you did so although i spoke in support of the transfers about that choice i just want to say tonight that given a difficult assignment i believe that the staff assembled a list of projects for possible postponement that did as little harm as possible to the safety and accessibility aims of the bond program and you should be encouraged that when necessary this staff can perform triage thoughtfully and responsibly provision two of tonight's resolution offers a fuzzy alternative to the commitment of 25 million dollars the district's approved budget for 24 2014 2015 offers a clear solution by modest borrowing against your general fund in the current low interest rate environment without diminishing the operating contingency that underpins the district's favorable credit rating you can assure that these high school projects will be built to the student-centered criteria this is a practice the district has used responsibly and successfully in recent years it's probable that low interest rates through the next bond auction will allow the work to be completed largely with bond program funds limiting the indebtedness and allowing any short-term debt incurred to be retired quickly this is your opportunity to quote align building space features with delivery of educational programs as the resolution puts it and i urge you to seize it consider amending resolution 4922 to authorize staff to borrow against the general fund in order to apply the additional criteria to the schematic designs and the construction of franklin roosevelt and grant high schools this is not an easy choice you may have to include debt repayment in the next bond but 45 million dollars of this bond was devoted to debt repayment for some very defensible projects there's the alternative is a lost generation of three modernized high schools built that will fall short of the expectations and aspirations of portland students thank you thank you i'm joshua curtis co-chair of our portland r schools and that's c-r-t-i-s last week when you chose not to vote on a resolution for additional criteria to the high school education specifications the implication was made that high schools built with future bonds could be built with the additional criteria and that creative scheduling or enrollment balancing could solve the inadequacies with the designs of franklin roosevelt and grant
00h 20m 00s
last week's discussion failed to address the inequity that would arise if franklin roosevelt and grant do not have the additional criteria applied to them the decision last week forces one of two bad choices upon the high schools in the current bond program either they must have a smaller student population or the students at those schools would not be able to take a full schedule of classes the inequity of preventing students from taking a full schedule at these schools is clear the more courses a high school student can take the better they will be prepared for college or a career but there is also inequity in having these schools designed for smaller student populations as the high school redesign made clear the larger school's population the more robust programming it will be able to offer its students by designing smaller schools the students at franklin roosevelt and grant will have fewer course options available scheduling solutions do not erase the inequity it would not be fair for these students to have to arrive at school an hour before their peers at other schools there is clear research and any parent can tell you that teenagers minds are not receptive to learning early in the morning your decision last week creates a deeper and more important inequity than just between schools both franklin and roosevelt have a higher proportion of both students on free and reduced lunch and students of color than district average building franklin and roosevelt smaller than other high schools in the district not only violates pps's equity policy but furthers the discrimination which people of color have suffered at the hands of pps for decades these students should not be forced to go to schools that are structurally incapable of offering a robust program their communities should not have to face disproportionate enrollment balancing they should have the 21st century high schools that were promised to voters in 2012. for these reasons i encourage you to build franklin high school so that it can educate 1700 students who are each able to take a full course load on the same schedule as students across portland thank you next we have rita moore and susan and glotta bartley my name is rita moore and i'm speaking as a member and co-chair of our portland our schools and i'm going to talk fast i want to speak to you tonight about the enrollment boundary and programming implications of choosing to build franklin roosevelt and grant too small earlier tonight you heard presentations about enrollment and transfer and the proposed district-wide boundary redraw although both reports focused on schools serving kindergarten through eighth grade i'd like to highlight a few themes that can be drawn from these two reports that have direct application to your decisions on the high school rebuilds one enrollment equals equity for many years you've heard about significant enrollment issues that interfere with students learning you've heard about the inability of under-enrolled schools to provide a full curriculum for students and how resource issues have become more acute as students get older and need a broader deeper and richer curriculum to develop their academic potential alternatively you've heard the problems of over-enrolled schools with classes that are too large and buildings are so crammed that there's no space for the wraparound services that we know can make a critical difference for students the resolution before you tonight envisions a situation in which these three high schools will essentially have to choose between under enrollment and over enrollment i don't think this is what any of us who worked on or voted for the bond had in mind two building size matters as the psu report noted among the many complicating factors in right-sizing schools across pps is the fact that pps's portfolio of buildings includes many that are simply too small to accommodate the enrollments believed to be necessary to support full programming pps can be forgiven for having to make do with less than optimal learning spaces since these buildings are a legacy of the past our legacy to the future should not be three high schools that we know will be too small from the moment they open their doors three boundary redraws are not a panacea some members of the board have suggested that even if the three high schools in question end up being too small we can always solve the problem by redrawing boundaries the solution assumes that there will be available capacity to accommodate overflow current high school enrollments are at their lowest ebbs since world war ii all projections are that pps enrollment will continue to grow uh you heard 55 to 60 000 total enrollment and high school enrollment will be approaching 20 could approach 20 000 within a decade
00h 25m 00s
at that point pps will have little excess capacity unless the intention is to build the next wave of high schools to be much bigger than this first wave given how resources are allocated this strategy means that we will literally be cementing inequity across our high schools four portland families want strong neighborhood schools it was the foundation of the high school redesign in 2010 and and we continue to talk about high school about neighborhood schools as the foundation um a 25 million gap is not insignificant but it's not insurmountable either opus believes that the stakes are too high to abandon the vision that produced the 2012 bond victory in your quest to keep promises that you didn't make please don't break the promise that you did make 21st century high schools that will serve portland students for generations to come thank you i'm deeply humbled by the opportunity to speak with you humbled because you are the group of people who made the decision to sustain the advanced scholar program can i can i ask you to state your name and spell your last name please i'm sorry to interrupt bartley that's a-n-g-l-a-d-a no hyphen b-a-r-t-l-e-y susan i'm deeply humbled by the opportunity to speak with you humbled because you're the group of people who made the decision to sustain the advanced scholar program at franklin by voting to provide funding for the acceleration strategies that are working so well i'm here tonight to speak with you about preserving something very special and i ask you to consider what happened at franklin this year we had two gates millennium scholars three ford scholars five black united fund scholars two al fourth and memorial scholars multiple psu osu and uofo diversity scholars and multiple full and partial scholarships to prestigious private universities one of these winners lives in a home in southeast portland that is lit with the light of one single lamp several of these winners have family members who've struggled with addiction one of these winners is a leader in her tribe a person who will preserve her yurok tribal language and culture poverty has struck and so many struck so many of these winners homes franklin is showing that diverse groups of students in a 55 percent free and reduced lunch population school can exceed all expectations and that upper middle class students and those living in poverty can come together to shine a bright light for other portland public schools i remember a time when it wasn't this way in my 10 years i see the decision to remove the child care program as one of the most brilliant administrative decisions that has yet been made the program diverted funding and fte away from academic and arts the choice to remove it has allowed for much needed funding to flow into academic excellence and into our growing arts program if we have come this far since 2007 reaching a place where 421 students in our advanced scholar program have all committed to taking four more ap courses a place where the genius of dance teacher and choreographer julana torres can propel franklin high school towards being a national and state model for both arts and academics that is our focus please consider what the population is clearly asking for they're asking for the opportunity to go from that home with one lamp to become their family's first college graduate and doctor they're asking for and careers that will take their families out of poverty they're asking for classroom spaces they need to continue the academic excellence please vote for the reassignment of the child development program so that we can preserve the funding and space needed for our exemplary academic and arts program this wise move will show your support for the nuanced programming and strategic decisions in support of academic and artistic excellence that have gotten us this far your vote will show your commitment to supporting the amazing dreams and resolutions of those who inspire us all the students if you look at their choices and at the overwhelming academic success and strong graduation rate including the number one graduation rate for african american students in the state of oregon you can see easily the will of the community please help us to continue to be the exception for providing adequate spaces for classrooms thank you thank you next is paul anthony and scott bailey go ahead gentlemen good evening my name is paul anthony a-n-t-h-o-n-y i'm here representing our portland our schools and i'm going to be re-emphasizing some points made earlier
00h 30m 00s
again opus is asking you to amend the resolution to approve the master plan and schematic design for franklin to the full criteria presented to the board last week for a capacity of 1700 students at 30.4 credits per student as explained by dowell last week the current proposal will limit franklin roosevelt and grant to a functional capacity of 1 250 students each taking 30.4 credits we believe that if you approve the resolution as is without the increased funding of 25 million dollars staff as indicated as necessary the result will be three substandard high schools dao presented you with three formulae for pps to cope with the consequences of the resolution before you the first the pps revised the ed specs for later bonds to make the other portland high schools larger the second the pps mandate a strict limit on the number of credit hours students can take at these schools which once again puts the district in violation of the ode's requirements for class hours offered the third that pps not place additional teachers at these schools and hold to a higher student-to-teacher ratio which puts the district in violation of its contract with the teachers union each of these scenarios will have the same immediate result constricting students opportunities as north and inner northeast portland were reminded time and again in last year's jefferson cluster enrollment balancing process fte and the resulting academic athletic and cultural opportunities programming and ultimately college and career readiness invariably follow the number of students enrolled our community has been dealing with the consequences of constricted student opportunities for decades and you are now contemplating literally casting a grotesque level of inequity in concrete all of the options for coping with these building sizes seem to us to be completely unrealistic as you have already heard this evening pps is about to start on a complex and politically hazardous district-wide boundary redraw one that will take a great deal of courage you risk complicating that exercise exponentially by limiting the size of franklin roosevelt and grant and at the the face of it the front of it forcing the move of hundreds of students further tonight you've also received the preliminary report from sackett which makes the point perfectly clear that differences in the physical sizes of school buildings are an intractable long-term equity issue and a significant barrier to educational opportunities finally neither franklin or roosevelt have sites that can be readily built out to correct this inequity as we saw in dao's presentation last week whatever option the district pursues the current build-out will essentially put franklin's side at capacity portland needs all of our high schools to be safe accessible modern learning environments and capable of offering a robust and equitable education they will only be so if you allocate another 25 million dollars thank you last call last call yes uh my name is scott bailey b-a-i-l-e-y i'm here representing our portland or schools we are asking you tonight to amend the resolution to approve the master plan and schematic design for franklin we support the plan and design based on the full criteria presented to the board last week for a capacity of 1700 students taking an average of 30.4 credits what was referred to as option three we believe that if you approve the resolution as is without the increase in funding the result will be that we'll have three substandard high schools so according to your math we've increased uh the student level level from 1500 to 1700 the expected credits from 24 credits to 30.4 credits that's a 44 increase but the increase in funding is only 5 million which is about 6 percent those numbers simply don't add up and that's why we end up with the functional equivalent of 1250 student school you're effectively saying we'll figure out later how we're going to stuff an extra 450 students into a high school that is already full one thing that has been suggested is to move to a flexible schedule now if you add a zero period for all students or a full zero period for all classrooms you're going from eight periods to nine to nine periods that's a twelve percent increase that's only one third of that thirty six percent increase going from twelve fifty to four fifty so you'd have to add three full periods
00h 35m 00s
you'd have to go from basically seven o'clock to five o'clock how are you going to deal with athletics around that how are you going to deal with student clubs remember at grant for example in the fall a quarter of the kids are going out for some kind of sport think about trying to schedule all of that think about also and i lost my place here if there's a demographic bump which we get all the time we don't we don't hit a constant level of students it goes up 50 or 100 a year unexpectedly how are you going to schedule for that on top of what's already going on another possible solution suggested is off-campus learning activities for students we're not going to be ramped up in three years to be able to do that for 450 kids at a couple of different high schools nor is the community going to be prepared to find significant activities for a full year for 450 kids at a time the three high schools we're going to build should set the standard for the future within another dozen years or so we're going to be if the voters are willing we're going to be rebuilding all of our high schools and they should be safe accessible modern learning environments and they will be beautiful buildings but will they be capable of providing a great education for 1700 students only if you choose option 3 and allocate another 25.7 million will you be able to keep your promise to the voters thank you for listening thank you board discussion on the resolution remember you want to do an amendment um i don't have any discussion i've discussed it three other times so i'm done okay others uh i guess i have a question for uh stat uh which which did we cut did we come up with a number for um securing the foundations uh at franklin just so so that we can expand we did look at those uh probably best for debbie to address this because the details on it are a function of a number of variables not least of which is cost but there's aesthetic considerations as well so debbie that that was one of the i mean in in order to get the seven classrooms we were given an aesthetic design schematic so that's okay yeah correct um we have had conversations with our cmgc that the cost in order to implement the foundations and the structure infrastructure to be able to support those classrooms in the future is approximately two hundred thousand dollars the bigger issue is the premium that you pay for not building that those five classrooms today so you put a roof on that and then sit and wait it's approximately five hundred thousand dollars is the premium associated with building it in the future plus escalation meaning you take off the roof insulation you take off the roof you then are working over an occupied space below because in both situations whether you're building over the gym or whether you're building over the cte you're building over an occupied space and you also have the ongoing safety factor of having to deal with getting supplies up to that other area building with a crane et cetera so you have to pay about a 500 000 premium plus escalation to wait and build it in the future okay as opposed to if we just build it now it would be possible what no what if those additional five classrooms i forget off top of my head well so so just just to start the role and try and square that is about 500 000 so that would position the the cte wing to be able to put the five additional classrooms the extended learning spaces the teacher work areas on in the future but the cost of that would be would have to be calculated separately so the main what you would ask for last week i believe in fact it's in the resolution is for staff during design development to actually work on refining what that cost would be to configure that so that in the future you could put classrooms on whether it was part of this bond because we had dollars available in the future or some future bond it would basically configure the facility to support that okay thank you well let me can i um repeat back so that i have an explaining level understanding or misunderstanding uh you're roughly saying it's seven hundred thousand dollars
00h 40m 00s
uh to prepare the foundations for the expansion to make it the full 1700 equivalent uh student equivalent that we that we all want well what we're saying is that your proposal says that it's approximately 24 to 25 million dollars to put the additional criteria in place today at those three facilities what we're saying is just at franklin instead of spending that 25 million dollars you're only going to spend 200 000 to put in the foundation in the infrastructure but at some point in the future instead of it being 25 million dollars for all three it would be an additional one and a half to two million dollars for all three plus escalation based on when you decided to exercise building that okay so that makes sense so for so for franklin it's it would it's two hundred thousand dollars to re-escalate yeah to to have the opportunity to expand either during construction uh or at another date correct today today and then so then the other question though is that the 25 million is all for three for franklin since since this is we're dealing with franklin tonight what is the number what's the seven classrooms cost that that marginal cost of that so the marginal cost for the additional classrooms would be about 99. nine yeah about nine million dollars okay if we were to do that and that would be on top of doing the structural and the foundation improvements now to be able to accommodate those again either later in this bond or in a future month right and those are 200 thousand dollars okay so i i think we would have to consider escalation in that as well so i think a better number to use would be 500 000 but okay so the other thing we have to keep in mind the time cost of money and so that's why when we respond we're always talking about pre-escalated as opposed to what the cost to be in the future okay thank you this is really the um the compromise solution that i support and i appreciate you landing on so specifically to read that second resolve during design development phase staff will continue to explore opportunities to align building space features for the delivery of educational programs including adapting structural enhancements which may support future growth of classrooms and again whether that's later in this bond program due to things going our way or in another in another in a future bond so i appreciate that um and these are going to be um fully 21st century schools that are going to be fantastic schools so it would be different if we were talking about removing the theater or removing some of the wrap around services or removing the the art classrooms or something like that so um you know i appreciate the the impassioned testimony that we heard but we can have you know full support for our fantastic our teachers fantastic ap scholars program and the arts and the wraparounds and we don't need to choose among them this is going to be a fantastic school i support the resolution and like to move forward i'm going to vote for the resolution because i think they finally kind of got down to where it is i'm also willing to vote for director reagan's edition which we don't have yet but i'm and i'm doing it under this under this situation i'm a vote for finding the rest of the money to do the schools right and i whether you're using whether we're using mr wolf's suggestion using the suggestion i was just throwing off the top of my head last week whatever suggestion that we're going i'm a vote to find that 25 if it's 25 million let's find 25 million over this period of time maybe it's going to be a little more than that fine let's find it and build the schools right we made a mistake we're now stuck with correcting and the mistake was that we didn't put the bond out correctly in order to do what we want to do and it was a huge mistake and let's correct it and i'm for and i'm a vote i'm right there to find the money and if our superintendent can find that money i'll vote to spend that money on those on these three schools there is some question a little bit about roosevelt in the numbers because the numbers are projected a little differently than they are i mean you're down at grant they already have 1600 kids or someone grant don't they over 1600 because they had 300 they're graduating 375 kids from their so they must have pretty close to sixteen hundred kids they usually have less seniors than you do other grades so we're already over there
00h 45m 00s
so i'm saying let's find this money let's get it done right get rid of the mistake move on i think that would say the most for the next bond like yeah we followed through we did everything in the bond and then we also found the money to do what we said we'd do which we didn't have the money for because we made an error so there you go thank you bye so i just want to clarify that when we pass the bond i don't know that we made a mistake i think things have changed since we passed the bond so i just want to be clear on that that there's a couple of things that happen one is that we have more funding now from the state thankfully and we have put that toward hiring more teachers we've reduced the teacher student ratio as a result of that we're trying to decrease work teacher workload in general and we are at a point where we're trying to offer more credits to our high school students and all of those things mean that we need more classroom space and all of that happened since the voters passed the bond so i don't know that we're trying to correct a mistake i think we're trying to figure out how to deal with our new reality so i just wanted to kind of make that clarification because we didn't project that we need to have kids in class a certain number of times and we're gonna have a certain number of kids so maybe it wasn't just a mistake where we counted up wrong but we judged it wrong in my opinion but i appreciate what you're saying bobby um so there was a one question and then i wanted to uh offer an amendment um so first of all in terms of my question if we uh are able to build the foundation now structurally to support the additional weight of more classrooms i'm remembering in our conversation last week when we were talking about doing the full build out but we'd only be able to do 54 out of you know of the summer projects there was some discussion about a year from now we'd have a pretty good idea if we could actually do a whole lot more of those summer projects so my question is if we build the foundation to support the expansion is there an opportunity still in a year to do that add-on and have it complete at the same time that the rest of the building would be complete oh i love the head-nods that's good so a great question dr regan there is certainly the potential with the bond premium that we described on last tuesday night that if that became available it could be used in a number of in a number of ways one of which could be moving towards uh putting additional five classrooms in um however i think we would need time to look at uh how that might phase in because currently we don't have that built into our into our plan um as is outlined in the or described in the resolution we would like we staff would like time to look more at the details of this because as you point out if funds were available i think we would want to be able to describe a scenario by which we might use those funds to to build franklin out more great so i wanted to i think that in my mind perhaps gets us part way and i wanted to offer an amendment that i think will continue to get us a little bit farther along that i'm hoping that my colleagues will consider so um i wanted to offer an amendment should i how do do i do this do i read it into the record first and then get a second yeah i have it can i have to say what the amendment is and then there would be a second okay um so i i first want to apologize uh because last week i uh didn't have the opportunity to participate in the the rather robust conversation i did uh view that streaming uh and uh so i i feel like i'm up to speed on on a number of things but i i also want to talk about since this is the first opportunity kind of where i'm landing on all of on all of this um i think the first thing is that i'm not entirely comfortable with us sort of kicking the can down the road and what that means to me is i looking at the project as we'll get to that piece later and let me explain that a part of what my experience is is that later never comes and uh and that concerns me so that's generally one of the one of the challenges i have i think that i think the schools need to have uh need to have a capacity that is uh is consistent with a projection of 1700 students i think the credit hours are obviously something we are obligated to um to offer as well but there's some pieces of this that i'm
00h 50m 00s
not willing to to sacrifice um one i'm not willing to sacrifice i think last week you mentioned that you could find you could find 25 million in the general fund i'm not willing to say that i could find 25 million in the general fund because i'm not sure where i would be taking that 25 million out steve could find it um uh but uh so but that's that's a concern that i have because that affects our current programming it affects the services that that we're offering particularly to students that as some testified uh are services that help support our equity initiatives so it would feel a little awkward if it's an equity issue to add to classrooms but then we'll take away services um i'm also not really i'm not willing to sacrifice safety and accessibility to me that's sort of a no-starter and uh and there's been there i think i didn't see the first part of the meeting i think there were some there were some testimonies certainly has been a number of emails that have come through testifying concerns around around safety and accessibility those were two key points for me out of out of the bond um and then the another piece that i'm not willing to sacrifice is the the teen parent services and i say that because i you know there's a lot of talk about 21st century creating a space for a 21st century education i'm not sure how possible that is when we don't take into consideration uh the challenge of the 21st century challenges that our students are experiencing and one of those challenges happens to be teen pregnancy and without being able to accommodate without being able to support students in in those challenging times we see it contribute to dropouts we see students entering alternative alternative education helens view for example was mentioned earlier today they have a fantastic program for um for a teen teen student or uh teen parents um i think two and uh it was mentioned tonight and it's been kicked around uh ted mentioned it uh this idea of financing using that as another lever for us uh during this during this process it's not unheard of as it was as he mentioned when we paid off rosa parks during this bond so i wouldn't be adverse to that i would be adverse to it if we're sacrificing some other things or i would have to be in that case pretty convinced that we're not just throwing one opportunity out to to grab a hold of another because that seems opportunistic and uh and i'm not sure how um how effective ultimately will be so that's kind of where i'm landing on on these areas so thank you bobby for letting me go appreciate that so yes i'd like to offer an amendment that i think will get us part way toward um getting the number of classrooms that we need in our high school so um here's uh the amendment would be to resolution four nine two two so under recitals which of course set up the resolved part um by the way i was told that this is at everyone's desk and that there are copies here karen for audience members if anyone's interested under recitals we would basically explain how we got into this situation so h during this budget cycle the board agreed to hire additional teaching staff and to reduce current teacher to student staffing ratios in addition the board recently agreed to staff high schools to ensure that students can forecast for a full class load up to eight credits the board acknowledges that these actions can impact the number of classes needed in schools so that would be added to the recitals and then under resolutions number two which is good would be improved to say the board directs staff during the design development phase to continue to explore opportunities for additional classroom space specifically the board requests that staff review the current education specifications for comprehensive high schools with particular focus on tier 1 versus tier 2 status for teen parent services in each school and whether these services could be provided via a regional approach the board asks staff to explore other opportunities to align building space features with delivery of educational programs for high school students including adapting structural enhancements which may support future growth of classrooms so that is my motion i will second it okay we've got a uh
00h 55m 00s
uh an amendment to resolution um four nine two two in a second some discussion i'd like to give my explanations yes so i've i was pleased to see in the current language in resolution 4922 approving the franklin high school schematic design that recital b refers to our comprehensive high school education specifications as a guide because that truly is the correct term a guide is not a firm set of instructions or mandates and shouldn't be things change flexibility is warranted and the amendment bring forward reflects that reality since we approved our educational specifications two significant changes have happened that impact the number of classrooms needed in our community comprehensives first we are hiring more teachers as a result of better funding from salem and our desire to reduce class sizes reduce future workload improve our student-to-teacher ratio and provide students with a more personalized learning experience the second is our decision to ensure that every high school student is able to forecast for a full day of classes so that they like all other portland public school students can expect to be in school for a full day the changes we approved related to these developments are good for our students and good for our staff but they also necessitate more classroom space at our community comprehensive when you have more teachers and you offer more credits that's our new reality this in my opinion is all good progress clearly there are many ways to ensure we offer a robust program to students including facilities changes scheduling changes and program changes and ideally maybe a bit of each last week i asked about a staggered work schedule for our teachers which could potentially open up classrooms for another period each day we already do this on a waiver basis at many of our schools when we offer a zero period so this is certainly worth exploring further second we can expand our online learning options career internship opportunities and potential expanded partnerships with pcc and higher ed and these might take some pressure offs as students might earn credits outside of the high school classroom itself but another option is to look at our current education specifications and see if there is any are any possible areas where we can squeak out some additional classroom space last week i suggested that we could possibly convert franklin's proposed genius bar which is the equivalent of two classrooms into actual classroom space instead i'm realizing now that we can design this high-tech space for possible conversion to classroom space later if necessary rather than making the change at this time clearly this is a space that is important to our franklin design advisory group and the franklin community and is fairly cutting edge so i would ask that our architects look at designing this as a genius bar but flexible enough to be converted to classroom space if need be for background when i was on the forest park elementary school design team as a parent advocate back in 1996 we included an acoustically appropriate music room which was slightly larger than a traditional classroom and included storage space for instruments this room has since been used as a traditional classroom due to the high student population but can be converted back at any time flexibility is important what i'm proposing tonight is that we ask staff to re-look at our current high school education specifications to see if there are opportunities and or efficiencies given our need for additional classroom space this review should look at several different areas to see if we can make space for classrooms during this review i'm asking staff to look especially hard at the current plan to have a teen parent service center in every comprehensive high school if we were like most other school districts across oregon that have just one high school we'd certainly want this capacity at that high school but in portland public schools we have seven community comprehensives two focused high schools one k-12 alternative school and a myriad of alternative school schools including helensview with which we contract our teen parent population each year is approximately 152 students total and i believe i've read that teen birth rates are dropping to set aside two to four thousand square feet of space at each and every community comprehensive for an infant room a toddler room a crawler room toilet facilities changing area nap area outside play area etc as is now specified in our high school education specifications is worth a second look clearly we need and want to support our teen parent students to help them complete high school ready for college and career i'm simply suggesting this amendment that given our need for additional classrooms we ask staff to look at our delivery model and see if there is a more effective or efficient opportunity to provide these students these 150 or so students with these services
01h 00m 00s
project management staff last week indicated that the early learning center was a high priority for the franklin design advisory team or dag and a key career technical education or cte strand for franklin in fact i'm told by several on the dag and by teachers and community members at franklin that the teen center was assumed in the design and that there was very little discussion about it and on october 15th when the franklin design team voted on cte priorities the top contenders were engineering design and manufacturing health sciences and biomedical and information technology not child care the pathways highlighted by the franklin dag are in keeping with our overall goal during high school redesign to provide more stem cte and maker space opportunities for students and to encourage students to gain experience with careers that might lead to family wage jobs so by approving this amendment we will be saying to the franklin community and to our other high school communities that we hear their concerns about the need to prioritize adequate classroom space for high school students and we are looking at all reasonable options to get there so i ask for your support comments i really agree with director reagan about looking at some space in the i still think there's space around maybe in those buildings i do think that we need to have in each high school some sort of support for high school students who become pregnant and who deliver their babies i'm not sure that's a full-scale preschool where you have four-year-olds and three-year-olds uh but it's you know if you're nursing or whatever you're doing and we have that kind of support i think that's an important support i'm just saying 2100 square feet for a preschool is a lot different than having a certain amount of space and having child care for so that you uh uh student can finish their education and graduate from high school those two things are not necessarily the same so what i'm kind of seeing here a little bit and i don't is that let's look at this deeper much deeper this and see what the situation is maybe atkinson doesn't have any space fine then you can't go to accident but maybe james john does maybe you can put that space at james john for preschool if you would like to head in to do uh cte i mean we we haven't really looked at this i don't think i've never seen it come up and do we look at this and careful uh superintendent smith did we do you think we carefully looked at this issue and looked at possibilities all over and stopped in terms of alternates in terms of alternates or in terms of of age groups of the children and how many people have three-year-olds whatever i don't know exactly how it how it worked i just didn't see it so i'm kind of saying hey there was a conversation about us during the educational specifications way early yeah but in terms of in this last couple weeks when we've been talking about what our alternate plans no we haven't gone deep on any of these alternate plans they've just been coming up and we've been pursuing what what what what are the implications thank you thank you tom yeah um i'd like to thank mr regan for putting this forward i think it uh anna and everybody for testifying uh and um because i think it it's your comments this makes sense because um it's not precluding anything but it's keeping our options open particularly the foundational piece to make sure to spend the 200 000 and get the foundation right and then we can go in depth a little more keep pushing the envelope to get to where uh the financial envelope and the physical uh what's in that in the building um to get to where we need to be so i think this is spot-on and allows the flexibility for us to to meet everybody's needs so i'll be voting for it andrew um i will also be voting yes on this um i think something that really spoke to me about it when director reagan called me about it and we talked is that it's once again reviewing the ed specs and for me that's really important
01h 05m 00s
throughout this design process that we're constantly going back and questioning what can we actually do like uh director kriller said pushing the envelope um i don't think any of us are going to say that we don't want to support our students who are also team parents but and no one's saying that but i think what we are saying is that we're going to find more flexible ways to do all the things we want to do i mean tonight has kind of been about how are we trying to how are we going to do all the things we'd like to do with the constraints that we're under and i think looking at other options is a great way of doing that and you know i think this just gives us more options than we had before in terms of what we're able to look at doing so i'm supportive of it yeah okay um the i i guess i have a question about a uh sort of what a regional approach might look like for a uh teen parent services but i also want to and i don't know who i can direct that question to um maybe just out there anyone i don't even know this one um okay so but i think i think one thing we have to be we have to be conscious of is that there are compounding factors in uh in issues particularly that will affect uh teen parents and you know that we talk about transportation we also talk about a higher propensity to be living in poverty we have um there are situations where we have uh teens who are actively homeless and and all of these things compound so another option to your eyes sitting at this table with gas money and um and a health you know healthy safe place to to drop off our kid may not exactly be an option for a teen parent who's living in those conditions so i i really want us to be conscious of that and i also want us to to understand that um a number of these students are and i i realize that the tension in this is that you know uh we're supposed to be educators in in the business of education and some of the other services that uh are surrounding that and supporting that are not necessarily in our wheelhouse i also know though that there isn't a lot of options that exist be beyond what we might be able to offer so that's why i'm kind of continuing to to bring this up but some of these students are very much on sort of that that ledge what is what is the one thing that can help them to be in the classroom on a given day versus uh what's going to be a bear an additional barrier and uh and i think we have an obligation maybe perhaps even more of an obligation to those students um because there's a greater need so that's my you know and i really appreciate bobby your your back uh sort of justification and your commentary because that helped me understand a lot um so that's i guess what i'm offering is sort of my justification and understanding of of the situation i'm and again my feeling of are we one are we kicking the can down the road and two if we if we don't do something now will in the future ever come because again my uh my experience is that that's not guaranteed by by any means and uh and to students that have great need like this like teen parents i'm concerned that um if that opportunity never comes we lose them so can i respond to that so the first thing the first thing is that when i'm asking us to open up the ed specs i'm asking us to take a a deep look at this it doesn't mean this is where we will necessarily land it means let's take a look at the ad specs and see if there's other spaces like this that we could be looking at this seems like a logical place in some ways right now we're talking about reserving two to four thousand square feet at each of our seven community comprehensives for preschool kids when we know at franklin and at grant right now we're 12 classrooms short for our high school kids and so the question is are there other options and should we look at that and that's all i'm asking us to do tonight so steve brought up the idea of
01h 10m 00s
atkinson as a possibility could it be in a few years when we go out for a bond and atkinson is on that bond that we actually partner at atkinson and put a teen center there it's literally two to five minute walk it's probably a more appropriate place for a teen parent center for their children because it's already designed and built for young children if you have a parent with two kids maybe they're dropping one off at kindergarten they've got another younger one maybe you're allowing that child to be used to a new environment so whether it's a regional approach whether it's a school next door in this case wilson enrique could be another potential opportunity like that i'm just asking us to be a little bit creative given that we know we're 12 classrooms short let's look at our end specs let's look at what the different options are for potentially available space and some creative solutions i don't know what a regional solution would look like i'm not asking us to figure that out tonight all i'm asking us to do is open up our ad specs have staff look it at and see if there are any options to give us potentially more classroom space as we do these rib builds that's all i'm asking us to do tonight um just a couple comments so people understand uh where my head's at again director regan thank you for your creativity um and looking for ways one for me the resolution as written actually provides the flexibility that i'm i'm comfortable with i similar to what i've been hearing a couple of folks say i think these are critical services for some some at-risk populations and i guess as i hear and i know i'm going to say this first so folks my colleagues can hear me i know nobody's asking us to treat our teen teen mothers as second class citizens or anything like that but i just think of when we start finding other solutions other than right there in the school building knowing some of the barriers that teen mothers face it begins to feel again a little bit like we're treating them differently somehow they the man could walk away for example and then the mom is there with her child and we're asking them to go to a different school or go to a different region or drop them off in another way and your point to atkinson i guess is that that doesn't feel like a big barrier because it's two to five minutes across the street down the path um so one i'm just concerned about that that for me that um having this actually in every one of our high schools is is a value and does send a statement of that we're serving all students and i appreciate the flexibility that the administration has done is trying to find find ways to make that then a win-win for for their students as well as or the the teen parents as well as the other students that might um come in and do kind of a cte strand you're right that this this was not one that rose in the dag in the design advisory group as as a high priority um but at the time neither was maker space or a couple of other things that we've worked really hard to to work for community input to my understanding is that in the community meetings the community actually did say that this was a high value to them and the the next uh the last thing i guess i don't know i think i lost it it's getting late um it is so yeah yeah did you already speak with i think you did no i didn't i mean i think for me i'm comfortable um and feels more appropriate to go the resolution is originally submitted by staff and i appreciate the flexibility that's built into resolution number two and just you know in our governance role then resolve number one that the board approves the schematic design which was created by the professional design team working with the design advisor group and a whole slew of community input that's my parenthetical and does direct staff enter into the design development phase my practical parenthetical with immediately since we're already behind schedule for franklin high school so i'm comfortable with that i appreciate the flexibility that staff has built in i appreciate that we may have different opinions about that but we need to respect the process that we have laid forth and move forward any other comments matt all right um here here's my challenge you've heard my concerns around teen parent services i i like the second resolve here of calling out our educational specifications specifically as a an opportunity for staff to to review those i think that
01h 15m 00s
gets us to a place where um where we're clearly directing staff to to use that as a tool to guide us as a caveat i i also think that that i think we can find a way to finance 25 million i really do i don't think it needs to come out of programming i don't think it needs to come out of another investment i think we can find a way to finance it um i will i will vote for this but i will be a huge pain in the ass if it comes to um us making a sacrifice for uh and not providing a service that can help support our teen parents that's my promise to everyone because it is a too often we find excuses not to serve those most vulnerable in our system and we have to change that culture absolutely have to change that culture do you want to say something yeah okay um so just thinking about the ed specs and this was actually the other thing i was going to say to the amendment i i'm i'm concerned about this process where we continue to get to a decision point and we ask for all the underlying documents and student engagement parent engagement all the yes they should be adaptive yes we should be able to reconsider them but what i heard the bond accountability committee say is we are worried that you're going into a place where you don't have a plan that these documents should come first so that you don't unnecessarily spend money the city auditor just did an audit of some of their building and they said specifically they could have saved a lot of money had they had a plan to begin with and they stuck with that plan these are difficult decisions so i'm just expressing a concern that this this is again putting a decision um and then asking to go back and review base documents it seems like a really unfortunate way to to work toward these buildings can i ask a clarifying question too sure in terms of going back to review the ed specs at this point um any comment in terms of what that would do would you have to delay anything or how would you how would you do that how would you proceed so great question um our ed spec has been running on a parallel track as you know the only portion of the aspect that was approved was for the comprehensive high school so we have um a plan in july or august to come forward with a head spec for the other configurations the middles the gates k5s so the group that we have working on that is can certainly take this on to look at it however the group that is on the high schools right now are not directly involved however as we move into design development if there's implications that that will impact the schedule i think it's also important to recognize that franklin is still about 42 days behind schedule and that time has to be made up somewhere so we're already going to be compressing the schedule to uh to make that up either during design phase or construction so because it just seems like that would be a very high risk given that what we're potentially talking about here is rearranging the design and i'm not comfortable with rearranging the design at this point and i would urge my colleagues to please stick with the design that has been brought to us and we can move forward with this design rather than to continue to um to ask for modifications and to keep going back again and again so i would just add that if we make a tweak at this point to the design which is really what we're talking about that will enable us to serve our students better for the next 50 to 100 years i would say it's worth the effort at this point so but what's the stopping point right now we're voting on it but no but i mean when do we decide that that tweak if they come back and whatever many weeks saying well we looked at this whole issue that you asked us to look at and here's some different options then we'd have a whole other discussion about that and there would be a trade-off that would be a result of that then we'd have to discuss that and i just at a certain point we need to stop discussing all the different options and the different possible tweaks and things that we'd like to see different and move forward with the design that's been brought forward to us by the team and i'd like us to do that with the resolution as originally proposed rather than ask for further delay in process oh sorry no you have the floor so just to let everybody know where i am also um i can't vote for anything that calls out team parents i just i can't go there um
01h 20m 00s
if we want the staff to look at ed specs on a particular we could look at we could look at our expects on anything under the current number two in our resolution i add to that i mean i think ruth makes a a very good point we're 42 days behind this amendment asks the staff to go back and look at the ed specs concerning team parent services and whether the services could provided be provided via a regional approach and then what are we going to come back again and change the schematic design and how long is that going to take us i'm we have to move on these high schools i also um just want to clarify that these early learning centers are not child care they're not babysitting they're opportunities for our students who are interested in early childhood education or in education of any kind to get an experience working with children that's an honorable profession and i i don't think that we should um consider it anything other than that i also think that these centers provide an opportunity for community building for the families in the community that bring their children to those early learning centers but most of all i'm concerned about the timeline and so i'm not going to support this resolution any other comments okay the board will now vote on the amendment to resolution 4922 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes i'll oppose say no no i'm trying to think one are you a yes the amendment is approved by a vote of four to three with student representative davidson voting yes yes are there any abstentions okay we will now vote on resolution 4922 as amended all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no no abstentions resolution 4922 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative voting yes yes okay yay franklin not yet okay we will now move on to our business agenda the board will now the fact that several people mention the idea of whether or not we go look about borrowing 25 million from ourselves i'm gonna just ask that you guys have this conversation and give me an indication of if you have four people interested in that or not so that i don't get it from one person later asking me to go pursue something that i then have to track you all down to figure out whether or not i'm really pursuing it or not do i get the question i'm asking you and i don't know that it had traction or didn't have traction so do you know what my question is yeah some people said that it seemed matter of fact that it like it was yeah it was an option do you want us to go pursue getting you that in front i mean i think in addition to having just passed this what's the time do you want to know more it's just whether you're i'm going to ask our finance people to say is that yeah i mean i'm going to go am i going to go ask the question about 25 million and borrowing from ourselves do you want to know more about that or not yes yes sure okay will you check and see if i had four there's a child care center okay no we don't need just did i yeah but i want to know i had enough people asking me yes right okay thank you okay the board will now consider the remaining items on its business agenda having already voted on resolution 4922 ms houston are there any changes to the business agenda no there is not do i have a motion and a second to adopt the business agenda director atkins moves and director reagan seconds the adoption of the business agenda miss houston is there any public comment on the business agenda yes we have one melanie mosley three separate sections
01h 25m 00s
ms mosley were you here when i read the instructions for um public comment yeah three minutes i say my name is were you also aware of the board policy about offering criticism of district operations and programs and specific people this is why i have this chart right here so that i'm not identifying anyone specifically but you are but you are identifying no i'm every name there is not a particular person and i'm not gonna give my son's school name um i'm just giving context so that you can understand who i am talking about so that i don't have to say every single time an administrator or a it's pretty vague these are these are fictional people these are these uh what i'm going to tell you is um the background of my experience with pps this year these are um fictional people yes and they're all the names are gender neutral okay go ahead all right um uh first of all i just wanted to say uh mr morton i was very uh interested in your comment about three or four hours ago about we have an obligation to provide a provide clear digestible information to our community my experience this year with pps has not been as such i the key over here is they're in interest of not specifically identifying anyone um my name is melanie mosley m-o-s-e-l-e-y is how you spell my last name um my son zach not his real name is in sixth grade at portland school not the name of his school zach started at portland school in kindergarten from k through five it was an amazing school this changed dramatically when zach started sixth grade in 2013. this change fell directly in line with a change in administration at portland school when pat came on board following this change here's how our school community was challenged here's what we experienced seven teachers and two staff members left before the start of the year zack had all new teachers for middle school with the exception of one and they were out an average of once a week leaving his class with a substitute on average once a week a robust menu of electives was cut to two offered each of the four terms two identical electives every term as a result every student had to take the same elective twice during the term um zach a tag identified student since kindergarten never came home with homework almost he had a total of 18 days of homework to date in sixth grade um you have a full timeline in front of you of the events that occurred to me with you all but to summarize since november of 2013 i have met with pat pat's supervisor shannon to address my concerns and my son's tag plan shannon was not interested in talking about any of my other concerns only my son's tag plan no concrete action was taken until april 18th of this year when i received an email from jamie stating that my level 3 complaint was filed on february 24th was not valid and that they would not address my complaint nor my son's tag plan a quote from this from this email that i received from jamie your complaint also includes issues with your son's tag plan shannon offered to provide support to your son's teacher to ensure that your son receives services that he needs but you declined those supports stating that the only option was to remove pat in fact that was not my only option i never asked to remove pat i had it on tape luckily from a previous conversation with shannon that i did not say anything of the kind i just wanted pat to be a better administrator what would have happened if i didn't have that on tape there was no review of my son's tag plan until early may and just so you are aware my son's tag plan started last tuesday i started mostly in november thank you is there any uh board discussion on the business agenda which part any part if this is where if you want to pull something out you have to tell me you want to do that okay i'd like to discuss the bill and melinda gates foundation grant and pull that out so what number is that four nine two zero okay
01h 30m 00s
and four nine two five i'd like to vote on that separately and i'd like to make a comment on 4926 which is the uh student eh you'll have a chance to do a comment however you would like that sounds just wonderful uh director buell has asked that we remember exactly how we do this that we pull item number 4920 from the agenda and vote on that separately so we need a motion to do that so that's your motion and then we need a second to pull 4920. that now yeah be voted separately okay so discussion i just i really still have real issues with the bill and melinda gates foundation giving us money for in this case it's personalized learning and i don't know what that is exactly but i'm not sure if we're not spending any other money and we're just taking their money and we're messing around with it i'm not sure it's the direction we should go and i'm going to vote against it but later on since it's so late maybe i could give an explanation from the superintendent of what it actually involves or from somebody give you a brief explanation right now if you'd like it that'd be fine that'd be fine the revenue contract you have before you for a hundred thousand dollars from bill and melinda gates foundation is an award that we received after our first 100 000 award uh process was complete so part of that pro the initial process that we received the hundred thousand the initial hundred thousand for uh was a working group team that consisted of pat members who were selected by our instructional practices counseled by by president sullivan and other members of that council participating with administrators both in the building and the district level as a result of the work that we presented to gates in january we received the second 100 000 grant to continue our work in personalized learning those dollars need to be spent between now and december part of that work was to afford an opportunity for our teachers who are engaged in the working team to visit other schools and get a feel for what that personalized learning experience looks like from a teacher's perspective and from a student's perspective so one of your questions was i'm not sure what personalized learning is that we're talking about here i kind of know what it is about what specifically so what we're talking about yeah is meeting students at their appropriate rate and level so i would say in the big umbrella typical for the bill and melinda gates foundation funding dollars that looks strictly as technology um for us and how we've written our uh how we wrote our grant application how we have written this the plan for the hundred thousand dollars it looks like finding different ways that we may be able to meet students rate and level needs that are innovative approaches to learning including technology but also including things such as looking at furniture design and and different right so for example different uh a really easy thing around furniture design is around chair design so you know those wobbly chairs that kids in the middle school tend to um focus a little bit better if they're on a wobbly chair oddly um so what we're trying to do is seed innovative practices through this work and really do it in concert with our teachers union we've had really strong representation the group that went 10 days ago to do site visits included lisa davidson kim wilson trying to think of who all was with us a number of of teachers all of whom came back pretty pretty positive i don't know if any other board member can speak to that experience but it was it was a pretty strong learning experience thank you apologize to the superintendent and to you for not having this information and making it known ahead of time i was reading those catalogs all day that we had you know making sure i got them all ready thank you so okay now where are we going now we're going to vote on this
01h 35m 00s
is now um 4927 which is the one you just pulled out so um all those in favor of what is now 492 resolution number point 4927 ahead clarification so we started um by separating out resolution four nine two zero and it sounds to me like now you have i wouldn't always separated out this part of four nine two two 4920 just the bill and linda gates foundation okay that's what i was clarifying yeah thanks all right that's all we're voting on we made it four nine two seven we made it four nine two seven okay okay all those in favor of uh 4927 please yes yes yes any opposed no passes uh seven to zero with student representative davidson voting yes yes okay so now let's move on and vote on so my other ones you wanted here we go okay director buehl is there something else you'd like to pull out of the business agenda 4925 the council of great city schools just that not the school boards association yes the council just the council yes 4928 okay so that will now be resolution 4928 i'm going to go ahead and we'll need a second for that okay any discussion nope all right all those in favor of 4928 the funding for the council of great city schools please say yes yes yes all opposed no uh it passes with a vote of six to one with student representative davidson voting yes yes thank you okay and then you had was there another one four nine two six but that's going to be treated separately anyway correct are you voting are you is that something you just want to comment or you want to vote on it or what do you want a vote for but i want to comment on it well that would make a comment that's what we did up at the very beginning when we talk about is their comment on the business agenda okay that's your comment go for it four nine two six we don't know i'm voting for this because it seems like we've done a reasonable approach to dealing with the tag aspect of this but there's several other things that came up that i don't think we've done a good job on and that we need to look at further and i just wanted to comment that we needed to do that okay thank you great okay the board will now vote on the business agenda all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed we say no any abstentions no the business agenda is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative davidson voting yes yes okay midnight almost the next meeting of the board will be held on monday june 16th this meeting is now adjourned um
01h 40m 00s
do do

Sources

PPS Board of Education, Archive 2013-2014, https://www.pps.net/Page/2224 (accessed: 2022-03-24T00:57:54.073648Z)
PPS Communications, "Board of Education" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CC942A46270A16E (accessed: 2023-10-10T04:10:04.879786Z)

2014-06-02 PPS School Board Study Session

Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education - Study Session - June 2, 2014 Part 1

Event 2: Board of Education - Study Session - June 2, 2014 Part 2

Sources